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China’s “zero-COVID policy” (“qingling zhengce”) has provoked global debates, but the existing social scientific literature on the COVID crisis has paid more attention to the implementation of the policy than the “elephant in the room”, the policy itself, including its origin, evolvement, and underlying political logic. Dr. Xu adopts the “performative approach” to address this gap in a study as part of his ongoing book project about disaster politics in China. Xu argues that the “zero-COVID” policy was not an exception but a case that represented China’s public policy paradigm, especially its strong state image and its general goal to eliminate social problems—hence, “zero”. The zero goal was intensified rather than altered in various state actors’ reactions to changing situations during the pandemic period, but it was eventually botched due to its high economic, political, and social costs. This analysis provides a new approach to public policies and crisis responses in China and beyond by emphasizing the performative aspect, that is, as symbolic and expressive actions to project the state’s self-images in front of various audiences.

Bin Xu is Professor of Sociology at Emory University. His research interests are the intersection between politics and culture, including civil society, collective memory, symbolic politics, and disaster. He is the author of The Culture of Democracy: A Sociological Approach to Civil Society (Polity 2022), Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge 2021), and The Politics of Compassion: the Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford 2017). His articles have appeared in leading journals in sociology and China studies. He is currently working on two book projects: one is about mourning and memorialization of the COVID pandemic, and the other is about disaster politics in China.