DANGERS OF DECOUPLING AMID THE VIRUS

The author is professor of politics and director of the International Graduate Program in Politics at East China Normal University in Shanghai

While the current novel coronavirus outbreak continues to affect many in China, looming questions remain regarding global impacts related to health, economics and geopolitics. Given current scientific understandings of the disease, including its transmission rates and associated morbidity and mortality (and despite multiple studies indicating a relatively low fatality rate), the costs for China and in particular, Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter, continue to be substantial.

National and international containment strategies have unfolded quickly—some quite reasonable, others less so, but all fundamentally reactionary—and the economic costs to China and the rest