This Q&A published by the NY Times between a WHO (World Health Organization) expert team leader and the journalists about how China handles or prevents the further spread of the Covid-19 among its people can be eye-popping for many in the West, especially in the US. China has shown its strong side to the world, not entirely spontaneously because citizens and state are highly motivated to prove their systematic superiority to the outside world. To be sure, there has been mishaps, manipulations of facts and public opinions and embarrassing moments like this one from Wuhan, the ground-zero of the Covid-19 world wide outbreak, when the vice premier, Sun Chunlan, were visiting an apartment complex, residents shouted words “Fake! Everything is fake!” from their windows, referring to the all-positive reports by the local officers to their superior how thoroughly a job they had done to supply all the necessities of life from water to vegetables to the residents. For the most part, China has done an impressive job that may prove difficult for other countries to duplicate.
One common reasoning after reading the report is that China can do this because it is a regime of autocracy. People comply with the latest bans by staying homes because they are afraid of the consequences not obeying the fearful authority. But that is wrong, as the WHO expert has correctly rebuked. The real reason is the people, who had been taught to love the country from when they were little, who then motivated to fight the virus like fighting a war against foreign invasion.
Yet it would be wrong to conclude that China is a real giant capable of doing all things that the West cannot do. The truth is that China is a country that can be a giant for one day but then a heap of sand for another. The two sides exist at the same time. The key player that keeps China to be a giant but not a heap of sand is the state, a strong state that holds all-sweeping power, commands strong coercive forces, possess higher credibility than most if not all entities in the society and enjoys mostly positive reputation.
What most in the West do not understand is that the state is not an incompetent and inefficient social entity relative to the private sector as in the US, but rather an elite group of people that holds the key for the entire society to move forward. For the West, democracy is a natural arising because an ordinary but strong citizenship holds the power to elect, monitor and control the state. For China, a weak citizenship leaves a giant room of space for state maneuvers.
Looking back at the history, whenever the state was strong, China would be strong; but when the state was weak, divided, or relatively inactive, the country would also be weak. The reason is that a centralized, hierarchically powerful and generally charismatic state becomes an incentive in and of itself, and can reward loyalty, mobilize elites and unite citizens to strive for shared goals. In a society broken into families often with mutually exclusive materialistic interests, state is the only agent capable of penetrating the thick family walls and turning them into united forces.
Interestingly, China is not alone. If you look at the history of Japan, you will find that a centralized state provided the key for its Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) that opened its doors to industrialization, modernization and westernization.