‘Wang Hui, an intellectual leader of the so-called New Left movement, offers an interesting alternative explanation [on China's Covid response]... Wang, by the way, is quite well-known among China specialists in the West. Harvard University Press is scheduled to publish an English edition of his multivolume The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought.
‘...he argued that Beijing utilised the old Maoist-Leninist models of the people’s war and total war, to mobilise the entire nation – horizontally across the medical and scientific professions, and up and down the ranks from the top Chinese leadership to humblest local neighbourhood units. Everything was put on hold, even the all-important economy, while the nation’s resources were devoted to a single task.’
Read here (South China Morning Post, Nov 13, 2020)
