Authoritarian Absorption

For non-Columbia affiliates, registration is required to access the Morningside campus. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 4:00pm on Apr. 22 for campus access.

Names will be submitted for QR codes 1-2 days prior to the event. Registrants will receive an email from CU Guest Access with the QR code before or on the day of the event. NOTE: You cannot access campus using the QR code from Eventbrite.

Full Talk Title: Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Epidemic Politics in China

Speaker: Yan Long, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Qin Gao, Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice; Acting Director of the Asian American Initiative; Associate Dean for Doctoral Education; Director of China Center for Social Policy, Columbia School of Social Work

Yan Long examines how China absorbed global health norms while remaking epidemic politics through its own authoritarian logics. Her talk highlights the interplay between digital statecraft, bureaucratic control, and transnational influences in shaping China’s pandemic response. The analysis draws on archival research, interviews, and fieldwork tracing China’s evolving epidemic governance across SARS, AIDS, and COVID-19.

This event is part of the 2025-2026 lecture series "COVID-19 Governance and Impacts: China from Comparative Perspectives." The series will be part of the China COVID Project, a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. It aims to spotlight new empirical and theoretical research that interrogates China’s post-COVID standing through social, economic, political, and gender-based lenses. It features scholars working on governance, public health, digital statecraft, labor, gender, and civil society responses in China and Asia. The series will foster public dialogue and contribute to documentation and analysis of the pandemic’s legacy.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by the Columbia China Center for Social Policy.

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Host or Publisher Weatherhead East Asian Institute