How committed is China to zero-COVID? Debating on how to execute China’s COVID policy

ABSTRACT China’s COVID programme has created a great deal of controversy. One of the primary aspects is whether China needs to implement a strict and harsh mass control strategy to stop the spreading virus. Based on prior research on China’s perceptions of its COVID policy, this article examines how China intends to contain the COVID by using content analysis of Chinese-language literature on the policy. It identifies four major suggestions to execute China’s COVID policy: governance coordination, public control, propaganda operation, and economic recovery. When debating how to carry out China’s COVID policy, it is discovered that governance coordination is the most popular method, followed by the idea of building a local community-engaged public control system to deal with COVID. Despite the top-down command to maintain a strict approach to COVID, this article argues that the diverse (and sometimes contradictory) domestic views on China’s COVID strategy and execution have made it difficult to predict China’s future policy and how long it will remain in place.