For Wuhan’s COVID Mourners, Little Has Been Laid to Rest

By Tracy Wen Liu on July 30, 2020

In a conversation on Weibo, Yang, 50, told me about the loss of her 24-year-old daughter, Yuxi, her only child, to COVID-19. She was grieving, of course, but she was also seeking justice for what she viewed as an avoidable death. She showed me a petition she had been sending to various government agencies, reporters, and lawyers. In it, she explained that her daughter had contracted COVID-19 on January 16, during a visit to a local hospital. By then, many medical workers in Wuhan’s hospitals had already been infected. But it would be another three days before China’s government confirmed that the virus was spreading through human-to-human transmission. Had Yuxi been warned, Yang believes, she might still be alive.

Pandemic Responses Suffer from Common Ailments

A Look Back at the Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911

By William C. Summers on July 27, 2020

As the world continues to reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, the onslaught of new developments, disrupted routines, and fast-evolving medical research and advice trap us in a kind of eternal present. Each day feels unprecedented. But, at least since the Black Death, the macrohistories of disease have followed a tediously similar course. Over the past six centuries, in different places, with different diseases, and with different political systems, epidemics have tended to play out in a strikingly similar and sadly tragic way.

Is There a Future for Values-Based Engagement with China?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Neysun A. Mahboubi, Mary Gallagher & more on July 21, 2020

A key feature of current debates over U.S.-China relations is the proposition that “engagement failed,” in light of the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive posture towards liberal values at home and on the world stage. Already on the defensive, proponents of engagement have had to reckon, most recently, with the heavy-handed passage of a new National Security Law for Hong Kong, as well as the arrest and subsequent firing of Tsinghua University law professor Xu Zhangrun (who has been one of Xi Jinping’s most vocal critics amongst Chinese intellectuals). But in an essay published in ChinaFile earlier this month, Chinese political scientist and democracy advocate Li Fan argues that the seeds of political reform nurtured by values-based engagement continue to develop in China, notwithstanding adverse conditions, and that the benefits of such work by scholars and civil society groups are underappreciated by proponents of “decoupling.”

Shen Kui

on July 20, 2020

Shen Kui is a Professor at Law at Peking University Law School. He received a Ph.D. from Peking University in 1998, an M.A. in law in 1995, and a B.A. in law in 1992. He was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School in 1998, a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown Law Center in 2002, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Pennsylvania University Law School in 2017 to 2018.

Shen was Director of the Research Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Peking University and Vice Chairman of the Academic Board of Peking University Law School. He was an Adjunct Professor at East China University of Political Science and Law (2014-2017), Vice Dean of Peking University Law School (2006-2014), President of Soft Law Society of China Behavior Law Association, and Executive Chairman of the Committee on Government Regulation of the China Administrative Law Society. He is a member of the Legal Counsel Committee of China Drug Administration and of the Legal Counsel Committee of the Beijing Xicheng District Government. Subject areas of research: Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Soft Law, State Compensation, Risk Governance, Food Safety, Human Rights.

His books include Food Safety, Risk Governance and Administrative Law (Peking University Press, 2018); State Compensation Law: Doctrines and Cases (Peking University Press, 1st ed. 2011, 2nd ed. 2017); Transition of Public Law and Legitimacy (Law Press, 2010); and The Balance Theory: A Cognition Pattern of Administrative Law (Peking University Press, 1999). His articles in English include “The Delayed Response in Wuhan Reveals Legal Holes,” The Regulatory Review, April 20, 2020; “Administrative ‘Self-Regulation’ and the Rule of Administrative Law in China,” Penn Asian Law Review, Vol.13 (2018); “Participatory Rulemaking in China Needs Even More Effort,” The Regulatory Review, April 9, 2018; “Comments on ‘China’s Courts: Restricted Reform’,” The China Quarterly, 191 September 2007; and “Is It the Beginning of the Era of the Rule of the Constitution? Reinterpreting China’s ‘First Constitutional Case’,” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, Vol.12, 2003.

Jie Dalei

on July 20, 2020

Jie Dalei is an Associate Professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University. He specializes in security studies related to China-U.S. relations and cross-Taiwan Strait relations. He has published articles in Chinese and English journals on alliance politics, China-U.S. relations, Chinese foreign policy, and cross-Taiwan Strait relations. He got his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. Prior to Penn, he studied at Peking University, where he got a B.A. in International Studies and Economics as well as an M.A. in International Politics.

Sun Peidong

on July 16, 2020

Sun Peidong has been an Associate Professor of History, the Distinguished Associate Professor of Arts & Sciences in China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University since November 2021. Specializing in post-1949 China, she examines the long-term profound impacts of Mao Zedong’s revolutions and Deng Xiaoping’s opening-up on the Xi Jinping generation. She is the author of Who Will Marry My Daughter? (Shanghai, 2012) and Fashion and Politics: Everyday dress fashions in Guangdong Province, 1966-1976 (Beijing, 2013) (both in Chinese). Her other publications include numerous scholarly articles and book chapters in Chinese, English, and French. Her forthcoming publications include “Red Genes: How the Cultural Revolution Has Shaped the Xi Jinping Generation,” “A Certain Regard for China: Personal Accounts of French Academics Across Generations,” and “Fashion and Politics in China’s Cultural Revolution” (English Version), which will offer insight into the historical and cultural dynamics of modern China.

Rory Truex

on July 13, 2020

Rory Truex is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His teaching and research focuses on Chinese politics and theories of authoritarian rule. Current projects focus on the People’s Congress system, repression and human rights, and public opinion. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2014 and his B.A. from Princeton University in 2007.

William C. Summers

on July 8, 2020

William C. Summers is a recently retired Professor of History of Medicine, of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and of Therapeutic Radiology and in the Program of History of Science and Medicine at Yale University where he was a faculty member from 1968 until 2017. His formal education at the University of Wisconsin included mathematics, molecular biology, and medicine and he received an M.D. and Ph.D. in 1967. His research has included molecular virology, genetics of cancer, history of medicine and science, and the relationship between science and the humanities. He has taught and published on topics ranging from Quantum Mechanics to East Asian Studies, including long-running seminars on History of Science and Medicine in China, and Epidemics in Global Perspective. Summers has held visiting positions in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Stanford University, Columbia University, Hubei Medical College, and the National University of Singapore. He has served as Associate Editor of Virology and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Virology. His most recent book is The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911: The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease (Yale University Press, 2012). His current research is in three directions, a history of the American Phage Group, an examination of Central Asian history in the century between 650 and 750 AD, and the recent history of public health and geopolitics in the ASEAN group of nations.

It’s True That Democracy in China Is in Retreat, But Don’t Give up on It Now

By Li Fan on July 2, 2020

China’s popularity in the world is plummeting, and antagonism between China and the United States is growing. Many blame China for allowing a series of new viruses to emerge, for failing to stop COVID-19 when it first appeared, and for not sharing information about it with the rest of the world in time to prevent it from spreading. People say China seeks to use its strong economic power to dominate the world, and that as it extends its influence it promotes authoritarianism, denying to others the freedom and democracy it also denies its own people.