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How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control: Agency, Cognition, and the Politics of Information

Dali Yang, William Claude Reavis Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

4:30pm - 5:45pm | CSCC Conference Room, PCPSE Room 418, 133 S. 36th St
Wuhan

In this book talk, Dali Yang, author of Wuhan: How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control(Oxford University Press, 2024), scrutinizes China's emergency response to the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, delving into the government's handling of epidemic information and the decisions that influenced the scale and scope of the outbreak. Contrary to the official storyline, Yang's research reveals that China's health decision-makers and experts had an excellent head start when they implemented a health emergency action program to respond to the outbreak at the end of December 2019. With granular detail and compelling immediacy, Yang investigates the political and bureaucratic processes that hindered information flows and sharing, as well as the cognitive framework that limited understanding of the virus's contagiousness and hampered effective decisions and enabled the outbreak to spiral out of control. Focused on China’s health emergency response, Yang’s study speaks to universal challenges in the politics of organizational decision-making.

Open to all, informal lunch provided.