Navigating the dual dilemma between lives, rights and livelihoods: COVID-19 responses in China, Singapore, and South Korea

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a dual dilemma for governments worldwide: between the protection of lives and of individual rights, and more long-term between safeguarding lives and preserving livelihoods. Taking a dynamic approach, this paper asks how different regime types have navigated this dual dilemma by adjusting their pandemic-response strategies over the course of time. Three case studies from East Asia are selected to represent different regime types—autocratic China, hybrid Singapore, and democratic South Korea—that share experience with previous coronavirus episodes. Comparing the three cases between late 2019 to mid-2022, remarkable differences are found in the adaptability of response strategies. China’s authoritarian regime appeared to be at a clear strategic advantage due to its indifference toward individual rights during the first COVID-19 wave. In the longer run, however, the picture has changed substantially. While China has exclusively prioritized the protection of lives, fixating on its “Zero-COVID” strategy, Singapore has attached at least equal weight to sustaining livelihoods, experiencing a drawn-out zigzagging before pivoting to a “Living with COVID” strategy. Among the three cases, only South Korea has made consistent efforts to protecting individual rights while gradually recalibrating lives and livelihoods. Over time, the high degree of responsiveness of South Korea’s democratic regime has allowed for a relatively smooth transition to coexisting with the virus. The paper concludes with some lessons that European democracies might learn from pandemic responses in East Asia in a longitudinal perspective.

One Pandemic, Two Solutions: Comparing the U.S.-China Response and Health Priorities to COVID-19 from the Perspective of “Two Types of Control”

“…However, the extensive, prolonged, and intense social lockdown has also led to a series of problems such as rising unemployment, declining incomes, poor access to medical care, and shortages of living materials. Even worse, although the central government has repeatedly and explicitly stated that it opposes “excessive anti-COVID measures” and “one-size-fits-all” solutions, some regions continue to adopt various excessive restrictive measures in the process of combating the epidemic, resulting in very negative policy effects and a series of tragedies which, in turn, led to heated social debates and even protests [ 77 ]. For example, in January 2022, a pregnant woman in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, was unable to be admitted to the hospital for timely diagnosis and treatment due to a lack of 48 h negative nucleic acid test report, and miscarried while waiting at the hospital gate [ 78 ].…”

“…In September 2022, a major traffic accident occurred in the Guizhou province involving an epidemic isolation transport vehicle transporting epidemic-involved isolates overnight for centralized isolation medical observation, resulting in 27 people being tragically killed [ 80 ]. Under the high pressure of China’s epidemic prevention and control measures, the constantly reported secondary disasters and the huge economic stress brewed more and more grievances and doubts among the population, which was greatly reinforced during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 [ 77 ]. In response to these public attitudes, coupled with the fact that the virulence of the Omicron variant has waned, mass vaccination has been completed, and the treatment capability has been substantially improved, China ultimately optimized the anti-epidemic response and downgraded its management of COVID-19 by lifting almost all social control measures.…”

Democratic health in the corona pandemic. The corona pandemic as a trigger or amplifier of democratic erosion or autocratization?

“…4). Even in autocracies achieving a high vaccination rate, like in China, the population often faces a significant immunity gap since domestic vaccines had been less effective than the mRNA vaccines developed in the United States and Europe (Holbig 2023).…”

“…Switching from Europe to Asia the next contribution of the special issue by Heike Holbig with the title: "Navigating the Dual Dilemma between Lives, Rights and Livelihoods: COVID-19 Responses in China, Singapore and South Korea" compares the pandemic response strategies of three Asian countries with each other. While on can consider China, Singapore and South Korea as success cases when it comes to the reduction of COVID-19 cases and mortality rate (especially compared to some western democracies like the United States or Italy) we see a clear variance between the three countries when balancing out the dilemma between the protection of lives, individual rights, and livelihoods during the pandemic (Holbig 2023). Also comparing three different regime types-autocratic China, hybrid Singapore and democratic South Korea-over the period from late 2019 to mid-2022 with each other Holbig finds remarkable differences in the adaptability of COVID-19 response strategies between the three countries.…”