Governing public health emergencies during the coronavirus disease outbreak: Lessons from four Chinese cities in the first wave

Lingyue Li, Surong Zhang, Jinfeng Wang, Xiaoming Yang and Lan Wang
Additional contact information
Lingyue Li: Tongji University, P.R. China
Surong Zhang: Tongji University, P.R. China
Jinfeng Wang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, P.R. China
Xiaoming Yang: Shanghai Jing’an District Center for Disease Control and Prevention, P.R. China; Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lan Wang: Tongji University, P.R. China

Urban Studies, 2023, vol. 60, issue 9, 1750-1770

Abstract: The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a far-reaching impact on urban living, prompting emergency preparedness and response from public health governance at multiple levels. The Chinese government has adopted a series of policy measures to control infectious disease, for which cities are the key spatial units. This research traces and reports analyses of those policy measures and their evolution in four Chinese cities: Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu. The theoretical framework stems from conceptualisations of urban governance and its role in public health emergencies, wherein crisis management and emergency response are highlighted. In all four cities, the trend curves of cumulative diagnosed cases, critical policies launched in key time nodes and local governance approaches in the first wave were identified and compared. The findings suggest that capable local leadership is indispensable for controlling the coronavirus epidemic, yet local governments’ approaches are varied, contributing to dissimilar local epidemic control policy pathways and positive outcomes in the fight against COVID-19. The effectiveness of disease control is determined by how local governments’ measures have adapted to geospatial and socioeconomic heterogeneity. The coordinated actions from central to local governments also reveal an efficient, top-down command transmission and execution system for coping with the pandemic. This article argues that effective control of pandemics requires both a holistic package of governance strategies and locally adaptive governance measures/processes, and concludes with proposals for both a more effective response at the local level and identification of barriers to achieving these responses within diverse subnational institutional contexts.

Keywords: Chinese cities; coronavirus disease; public health emergency; urban governance; 中国城市; å† çŠ¶ç—…æ¯’ç–¾ç—…; çª å ‘å…¬å…±å «ç”Ÿäº‹ä»¶; åŸŽå¸‚æ²»ç † (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980211049350 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:60:y:2023:i:9:p:1750-1770

DOI: 10.1177/00420980211049350

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().