How China Succeeded in the COVID-19 Epidemic Prevention and Control: Interview with Associate Professor Leijie Wei, Editor of Waiting for Dawn: 21 Diaries From 16 COVID-19 Frontlines

The book Waiting for Dawn: 21 Diaries from 16 COVID-19 Frontlines takes a global perspective, examining the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on governments and the public around the world. Associate Professor Leijie Wei, editor of the book, believes that the reasons why mandatory tracking, testing, and quarantine measures have been effectively implemented in China center on the unified leadership provided by the Communist Party of China (CPC), the active response by state-owned enterprises and institutions, and the full trust of the majority of the public in the government’s anti-pandemic measures. In an effort to win elections, meanwhile, politicians in Europe and the United States are politicizing the pandemic and making China a scapegoat. In contrast to socialist China’s policy of ensuring all those in need are hospitalized with free testing and treatment, the essentially capitalist public health models applied in most Western countries have brought more concrete and explicit class conflict, and the drawn-out pandemic in the West has exacerbated various forms of social injustice. The COVID-19 epidemic is a reminder that a country’s governance ability should not be judged on the basis of simplistic conceptions of democracy, and that the needs of Mother Earth must be considered in the collective building of a community of shared future for humankind. © 2020 Pluto Journals. All rights reserved.