Disease control in China: The curious centrality of evil animals and mass campaigns

Q2 Arts and Humanities
Miriam Gross
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper explores the Chinese Communist Party's choice to use a unique public health model that combined mass mobilisation campaigns with the effort to eradicate harmful or evil creatures. Mass campaigns created an all-encompassing environment that ensured participation and also functioned well in conditions of administrative and medical scarcity. Within mass campaigns, the Party turned evil animals and eventually evil people into surrogates for the invisible worlds of diseases. This decision allowed the government to conduct campaigns that empowered the people while validating Party efforts at national transformation and scientific uplift at the grassroots level. The choice to substitute the seen for the unseen, however, had definite repercussions, leading to exceptionally arduous and frequently misdirected public health work, environmental damage and devastation for human targets. Despite vast changes in Chinese society in the Reform era (1978 to now) that mainly phased out mass campaigns, the Party nonetheless revitalised them as part of fighting SARS and Covid-19. It appears that Maoist-era strategies have become ritualised as mass performances that act as a social and political panacea: mass effort enacting traditional health activities ensures victory;and the government's decision to conduct mass campaigns signals its serious commitment, which requires and thus legitimates paternalistic and authoritarian control measures to succeed. © 2022 The authors.
中国的疾病控制:邪恶动物和群众运动的奇特中心地位
本文探讨了中国共产党选择使用一种独特的公共卫生模式,将群众动员运动与根除有害或邪恶生物的努力相结合。群众运动创造了一个包罗万象的环境,确保参与,并在行政和医疗短缺的情况下发挥良好作用。在群众运动中,党把邪恶的动物和最终邪恶的人变成了疾病的无形世界的代理人。这一决定使政府能够开展赋予人民权力的运动,同时也肯定了党在国家转型和基层科学提升方面的努力。然而,用看得见的东西代替看不见的东西的选择产生了明确的影响,导致极其艰巨和经常被误导的公共卫生工作、环境破坏和对人类目标的破坏。尽管改革开放时期(1978年至今)中国社会发生了巨大变化,主要是逐步淘汰了群众运动,但作为抗击SARS和Covid-19的一部分,党仍然重振了群众运动。毛主义时代的策略似乎已成为一种仪式化的大众表演,作为社会和政治的灵丹妙药:大众努力制定传统的卫生活动确保胜利;政府决定开展群众运动表明其严肃的承诺,这需要并因此使家长式和专制控制措施获得成功。©2022作者。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
International Review of Environmental History
International Review of Environmental History Arts and Humanities-History
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
0.00%
发文量
11
审稿时长
26 weeks
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