Conversation
11.11.22The Beginning of the End for Zero-COVID?
At the end of October, videos began circulating on social media of workers at an iPhone plant in the city of Zhengzhou fleeing factory grounds to escape a quarantine lockdown of some 200,000 employees. Whether the workers wanted to escape the...
Postcard
07.25.22Norma in Kaohsiung
On a warm evening this past January, a crowd gathered outside the Weiwuying Opera House in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city, more than an hour before the night’s performance was scheduled to begin. As they waited to enter the theater, people...
Conversation
04.29.22Shanghai’s Lockdown
In late March, China started its largest lockdown in more than two years, with most of Shanghai’s 26 million residents confined to their homes in an effort to battle the rapid spread of Omicron. As of mid-April, 45 cities across the country were...
The NYRB China Archive
10.08.20How Did China Beat Its COVID Crisis?
from New York Review of Books
The coronavirus was a big deal; it was something that I (and many other smug foreigners) misjudged but that the Chinese authorities accurately saw as a public health crisis. The thought and effort that went into the flyer were especially impressive...
Viewpoint
07.27.20Pandemic Responses Suffer from Common Ailments
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...
Viewpoint
04.03.20‘We’re Hardly Heroic’
Dr. Li, a heart specialist at Wuhan No. 4 Hospital, spent the third week of March preparing for the reopening of the hospital’s general clinics, which closed on January 22, when No. 4 became a key facility for treating COVID-19 patients. After...
Conversation
03.28.20Is U.S.-China Cooperation on COVID-19 Still Possible?
Over the past two weeks, as the outbreak of the virus known has COVID-19 has accelerated its deadly spread around the world, an already collapsing U.S.-China relationship appears to be entering a period of free fall. This is happening at a moment...
Conversation
03.19.20As Its Coronavirus Outbreak Abates, China Is Trying out a New Look. Is It Working?
As the coronavirus spreads globally, China’s government is working aggressively to change its international image. In the span of just a few weeks, China has gone from the embattled epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic to presenting the country as...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.07.14Dengue Kills Six in ‘Worst China Outbreak in Decades’
BBC
The outbreak is thought to have been exacerbated by the week-long holiday celebrating China's National Day. Daily health reports indicate that there are more than 1,000 new infections a day.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.23.13New Bird Flu Strain Linked to Death of Chinese Woman
Guardian
Chinese authorities have said a 73-year-old woman has died after being infected with a bird flu strain not previously found in people, a development that the World Health Organisation called “worrisome.”
The NYRB China Archive
05.29.03How the Chinese Spread SARS
from New York Review of Books
Communist China’s long obsession with secrecy is one cause of the present SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis. This passion for secrets—protected by lies—can involve events more than forty years ago, and it is heightened by a conviction...