Biopolitical Practices in Beijing

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic reminds people of the 1918 influenza pandemic which lasted for two years and which is estimated to have taken between 17 million to 50 million lives. The current Covid-19 pandemic, a force majeure, causing tension between states and the distancing of people physically, is steering the world into an unknown future. This article attempts to delineate the biopolitical practices in Beijing, from spring to summer, in the dimensions of the disciplinary supervision of government work, the allocation of medical resources, and the implementation of social control. Therein lies the mingling of sovereign power and biopower, conceptualized as a mutated pattern of ‘governmentality’. The public obedience to strict social control, an expression of the ‘general will’, originates from the conception of nationalism, underpinning the official narrative of ‘China’s experience’. Finally, a new pattern to handle the second outbreak, which started at Xinfadi market, has shed a new light on the thinking about ‘China’s path’.