Chinese society has undergone tremendous stress since the COVID-19 pandemic. During nearly three years of stringent lockdowns, Chinese citizens were isolated and heavily surveilled, with widespread reports of mental health issues. With the economy upended, anti-lockdown sentiments created mistrust between the Chinese government and its citizens, eventually erupting in the White Paper protests. The abrupt end of China’s zero-COVID policy in December 2022 further caused a spike in emigration, capital outflows, small business failures, and the relocation of supply chains by multinational corporations out of China.

Eighteen months since the end of zero-COVID, have these issues persisted, worsened, or improved?

Join us for an in-person discussion hosted by the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis (CCA). This event will feature authoritative experts who will speak on the economic, political, and societal issues affecting post-COVID China. Our distinguished speakers include Lynette Ong, CCA Senior Fellow and Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto; Scott Kennedy, Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Qin Gao, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work and the Founding Director of Columbia University’s China Center for Social Policy. The discussion will be moderated by Gady Epstein, Senior Editor at the Economist.

SPEAKERS

Lynette H. Ong is a Senior Fellow on Chinese Society at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. She is also a Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto. Her research lies at the intersection of authoritarian politics, contentious politics, and the political economy of development. She is the author of Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (Oxford University Press, 2022), The Street and the Ballot Box: Interactions between Social Movements and Electoral Politics in Authoritarian Contexts (Cambridge University Press, Elements Series in Contentious Politics, 2022), and Prosper or Perish: Credit and Fiscal Systems in Rural China (Cornell University Press, 2012). Her publications have also appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, China Quarterly, China Journal, among other outlets. Outsourcing Repression is the recipient of the American Sociological Association Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award and the International Studies Association Human Rights Section Best Book Award, and the project has been shortlisted for the inaugural Routledge Area Studies (Impact) Award 2022.

Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy and U.S.-China commercial relations, Kennedy has traveled to China for 36 years. Ongoing focuses include China’s innovation drive, Chinese industrial policy, U.S.-China relations, and global economic governance. His articles have appeared in a wide array of publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and China Quarterly. Major publications include: U.S.-China Scholarly Recoupling: Advancing Mutual Understanding in an Era of Intense Rivalry (CSIS, March 2024); Breaking the Ice: The Role of Scholarly Exchange in Stabilizing U.S.-China Relations (CSIS, 2023); China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, 2020); Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018); The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, 2017); and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005). Kennedy hosts the China Field Notes podcast, featuring on-the-ground voices from China, and the Trustee Chair co-runs the Big Data China initiative, which introduces pathbreaking scholarly research to the policy community. From 2000-2014, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. Kennedy received a PhD in political science from George Washington University, his MA from Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and his BA from the University of Virginia.

Qin Gao is a Professor of Social Policy and Social Work and the founding director of Columbia University’s China Center for Social Policy. She is a faculty affiliate of the Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC) and of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, a member of the Faculty Steering Committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Beijing, an Academic Board Member of the China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, and a Public Intellectual Fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. Dr. Gao’s research examines the changing nature of the Chinese welfare system and its impact on poverty and inequality; effectiveness of Dibao, China’s primary social assistance program; social protection for rural-to-urban migrants in China and Asian American immigrants; and cross-national comparative social policies and programs. Dr. Gao’s book, Welfare, Work, and Poverty: Social Assistance in China (Oxford University Press, 2017) presents a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the world’s largest social welfare program. Dr. Gao’s work has been supported by multiple national and international funding sources such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Social Science Fund of China, Asian Development Bank, UNICEF, and the World Bank. Dr. Gao holds a BA from China Youth University of Political Studies (China), an MA from Peking University (China), and an MPhil and PhD from the Columbia School of Social Work. She has recently been interviewed by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs; the Council on Foreign Relations; and SupChina’s Sinica Podcast.

Gady Epstein (moderator) is a senior editor at The Economist, editing longform projects including special reports, technology quarterlies and essays. Previously he was Eyewitness editor for 1843, The Economist‘s magazine for longform storytelling. Before that he served as Beijing bureau chief for each of The Economist, Forbes and The Baltimore Sun, where he also wrote international projects, winning a Gerald Loeb award. At The Economist he has also served as China Affairs editor, writing about human rights and U.S.-China relations, and as media editor, writing about how technology is changing the industry. Most notably, he appeared in the HBO show “The Wire” for approximately two seconds. He studied English language and literature at Harvard.