Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Epidemic Politics in China

Abstract

This talk examines how China rebuilt its pandemic response system through the country’s anti-HIV/AIDS efforts from 1978 to 2018. Rather than focusing only on domestic developments, it traces how foreign interventions—challenging the post-socialist state’s initial inexperience with infectious disease—helped push China toward professionalizing public health bureaucracy and adopting more liberal, globally aligned technocratic approaches.

This transformation involved a mix of confrontation and collaboration among transnational organizations, the Chinese government, and grassroots movements, which turned epidemics into a battleground for enhancing the state's domestic control and international status. Foreign interveners effectively mobilized China's AIDS movement and oriented activists towards knowledge-focused epistemic activities to propel the insertion of Western rules, knowledge, and practices into the socialist systems.

The talk also highlights the role of Chinese bureaucrats, who leveraged these dynamics by incorporating certain AIDS activist subgroups—especially urban HIV-negative gay men—along with their foreign-trained skills and technical competencies into state institutions. Ultimately, this absorption allowed bureaucrats to broaden systems of bodily surveillance while maintaining a liberal-looking public posture for international audiences.

About the speaker

Prof. Yan LONG is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and incoming Co-Director of Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies. She is a political sociologist whose research examines how globalization and China co-constitute one another, with a focus on public health, urban governance, international organizations, gender, and technology. Her current book project investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic, in tandem with rapidly expanding digital tools, has transformed China’s urban bureaucracy by reshaping governance practices, state capacity, and everyday state-society interactions. Her scholarship has been widely recognized, earning 13 national and international awards including the 2026 Joseph Levenson Prize.

For Attendees' Attention

This lecture will be held online via Zoom. To attend, please register the Zoom meeting at:
https://hkust.zoom.us/meeting/register/JVobEJyaRT2L8_Rq3GjidQ
(Meeting ID: 940 6556 5442 / Passcode: 421546)