Lessons from COVID-19 for Chinese Governance and State-Society Relations

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.

Speaker: Xueguang Zhou, Professor in the Sociology Department, Stanford University

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

Xueguang Zhou analyzes organizational responses to the COVID-19 crisis in a comparative perspective and discusses how this episode sheds light on the key characteristics of governance in China, particularly the relationship between mobilization capacity and institutional adaptability. His talk draws on his longstanding research on China’s bureaucracy and his reflections published during the pandemic.

Speaker's Bio: Xueguang Zhou is a professor of sociology, the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. His book The Logic of Governance in China: An Organizational Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2022) summarizes his decade-long research on the governance practice in contemporary China. His current research examines patterns of personnel flow in the Chinese bureaucracy and the historical evolution of the Chinese state.

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