Abstract
After the initial stage of the Covid pandemic, China exercised strong government control and enforced a “Zero COVID Policy,” which kept China relatively free of COVID. This is accompanied with a popular view, propagated by the Chinese government and widely shared by Chinese netizens, that the Chinese political system has shown its advantages over the Western democratic system. Some narratives in the U.S. about pandemic regulations and vaccination mandates tap into a similar vocabulary of superiority, championing libertarian notion of freedom against regulations. This study looks into the complex narratives about control of the COVID-19 pandemic in both China and the U.S. I argue that while both the supremacist and patriotic arguments in China and the U.S. about pandemic control focus on terms that emphasize absolute values, such as the value of life or the value of freedom, these arguments in fact always gain meaning through a global comparison, specifically with reference to each other. They serve domestic political purposes through binary oppositions established by trying to separate the self completely from the other while referencing each other. At the same time, however, the analysis of the pandemic asserts a scientific discourse into the debate, which shows that any meaningful global comparison cannot be done with a model of binary oppositions. Rather, it involves a complex model of multiple variables and constraints, in which either freedom (control) or life (death) can only be variations in value, but cannot gain absolute value.
Presenters
Lin ZouFaculty, Interdisciplinary Engineering, San Jose State University, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Covid, Pandemic, Narratives, Control, Freedom, Binary Opposition, Absolute Value
