As the COVID-19 pandemic presents the greatest threat to human health in over a century, people turn to their states to resolve the crisis and protect their health, their livelihoods and their future well-being.

How leaders perform and respond to the pandemic is likely to define their premiership - and this therefore presents a tremendous opportunity to write themselves into the history books as a great leader, rescuing their people from a crisis. Just as Winston Churchill did in World War Two.

Following Churchill’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste”, if leaders take decisive action now, they may emerge from the COVID-19 crisis as a national hero. What leaders must do quickly is to mitigate the crisis in a way which has a demonstrable impact on people’s lives.

Given the massive shock caused by the pandemic to economies across the world, it is not surprising that heads of state and treasury ministers have implemented enormous economic stimulus packages to protect businesses and jobs – this was to be expected and has been welcome.

National heroes can be made

But, in essence, this remains primarily a health crisis. And one obvious area for leaders to act rapidly is strengthening their nation’s health system to stop the spread of the virus and successfully treat those who have fallen sick. It is perhaps here that leaders have the most to gain - or lose - and where national heroes can be made.

This is particularly the case in countries with weak and inequitable health systems, where the poor and vulnerable often fail to access the services they need. One major practical action that leaders can implement immediately is to launch truly universal, publicly-financed health reforms to cover their entire population – not only for COVID-19 services but for all services.

This would cost around 1-2% GDP in the short-term but is perfectly affordable in the current economic climate, given some of the massive fiscal stimuluses already being planned (for example, the UK is spending 15% GDP to tackle COVID-19).

Within one to two years, this financing would enable governments to implement radical supply side reforms including scaling up health workforces, increasing the supply of essential medicines, diagnostics and vaccines and building new infrastructure. It would also enable them to remove health service user fees which currently exclude hundreds of millions of people worldwide from essential healthcare. Worldwide these policies have proven to be effective, efficient, equitable and extremely popular.

And there is plenty of precedent for such a move. Universal health reform is exactly what political leaders did in the UK, France and Japan as post-conflict states emerging from World War Two. It is also the policy President Kagame launched in the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, as did Prime Minister Thaksin in Thailand after the Asian Financial Crisis in 2002, and the Chinese leadership did following the SARS crisis, also in 2003.

In China’s case, reform involved re-socialising the health financing system using around 2% GDP in tax financing to increase health insurance coverage from a low level of one-third right up to 96% of the population.

All these universal health coverage (UHC) reforms delivered massive health and economic benefits to the people - just what is needed now to tackle COVID-19 - and tremendous political benefits to the leaders that implemented them.

When considering the current COVID-19 crisis, this strategy would be particularly relevant for countries underperforming on health coverage and whose health systems are more likely to be overwhelmed if flooded with a surge of patients, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia and most of sub-Saharan Africa, where many governments spend less than 1% of their GDP on health and most people have to buy services over the counter.

But also the two OECD countries without a universal health system – the United States and Ireland – are seeing the threat of COVID-19 already fuelling the debate about the need to create national, publicly-financed health system. And the presidents of South Africa, Kenya and Indonesia have already committed their governments to eventually reach full population coverage anyway, and so may use this crisis to accelerate their own universal reforms. 

Although difficult to predict which leaders are likely to grasp the opportunity, if some of these countries now fast-track nationwide UHC, at least something good will be coming from the crisis, something which will benefit their people forever. And ensuring everyone accesses the services they need, including public health and preventive services, also provides the best protection against any future outbreaks becoming epidemics.

Every night large audiences are tuning in to press briefings fronted by their heads of state hungry for the latest update on the crisis and to get reassurance that their government’s strategy will bring the salvation they desperately need. To truly improve health security for people across the world, becoming UHC heroes could be the best strategic decision political leaders ever make.

African policymakers face a dilemma when it comes to COVID-19. The first hope is to prevent the virus from gaining a foothold at all, and many African states have significant experience of managing infectious disease outbreaks. The establishment of the Africa Centre for Disease Control highlights the hugely increased focus on public health in recent years.

But capacities to track, test and isolate vary wildly, notably between neighbours with porous and poorly controlled borders and, in most cases, sustained national-level disease control is difficult. Initial clusters of COVID-19 cases are already established in many places, but a lack of testing capacity makes it hard to know the full extent of transmission.

It is not obvious what African states should do as a response. Lack of information about COVID-19 means the proportion of asymptomatic or mild cases is not known, still less the ways in which this is influenced by human geography and demographics.

Africa is an overwhelmingly young continent with a median age under 20. But it also faces chronic malnutrition, which may weaken immune responses, and infectious diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV are widespread which could worsen the impact of COVID-19, particularly if treatment for these diseases is interrupted.

Complex and unknown

Ultimately, how all these factors interact with COVID-19 is complex and remains largely unknown. Africa may escape with a relatively light toll. Or it could be hit harder than anywhere else.

What is clear, however, is that cost of simply following the rest of the world into lockdown could be high. Africa is relatively rural but has higher populations living in informal settlements than anywhere in the world. Many live in cramped and overcrowded accommodation without clean water or reliable electricity, making handwashing a challenge and working from home impossible.

And the benefits appear limited. The goal of lockdowns in most places is not to eliminate the virus but to accept the economic and social costs as a price worth paying in order to ‘flatten the curve’ of infection and protect healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. But this logic does not hold when many of Africa’s healthcare systems are barely coping with pre-coronavirus levels of disease.

Africa suffers in comparison to much of the rest of the world in terms of access to quality and affordable healthcare, critical care beds and specialist personnel. For example, in 2017, Nigeria had just 120 ICU beds for a country of 200 million, equating to 0.07 per 100,000 inhabitants compared to 12.5 per 100,000 in Italy and 3.6 per 100,000 in China.

The pandemic’s ruinous economic impacts could also be more acute for Africa than anywhere else. The continent is highly vulnerable to potential drops in output and relies heavily on demand from China and Europe. Many states are already facing sharply falling natural resource revenues, and investment, tourism and remittances will suffer - all on top of a high existing debt burden.

Analysis by the World Bank shows that Africa will likely face its first recession in 25 years, with the continental economy contracting by up to 5.1% in 2020. Africa will have scant financial ammunition to use in the fight against COVID-19 with currencies weakening, food prices rising, local agri-food supply chains disrupted and food imports likely to decrease as well. A food security emergency appears a strong possibility.

So, although several states have imposed national lockdowns and others closed major urban centres, lockdowns are difficult to manage and sustain, especially in places where the daily hustle of the informal sector or subsistence agriculture are the only means of survival and where the state has neither the trust of the population nor the capacity to replace lost earnings or meet basic needs.

Of course, this is not simply a binary choice between lockdown or no lockdown - a range of intermediate options exist, such as some restriction on movement, curfews, shutting places of worship, banning only large gatherings, or closing pubs, schools and borders.

A significant number of African states have so far taken this middle path. This will not prevent the virus from spreading nor, in all probability, be enough to ensure adequate healthcare for all Africans infected with COVID-19. But it may help slow the spread and buy invaluable time for African states and partners to prepare.

How this time is used is therefore of paramount importance. Popular trust in the state is low in many African countries so strategies must empower communities, not alienate them. Africa’s experience of previous epidemics and long traditions of collective resilience and community-based crisis response - which persist in many places – are significant strengths.

The right messages must be carried by the right messengers, and policies - including cash transfers and food distribution - implemented sensitively. If not, or if responses become militarized, public consent is unlikely to be sustained for long.

On 10 January 2020, Chinese scientists released the sequence of the COVID-19 genome on the internet. This provided the starting gun for scientists around the world to start developing vaccines or therapies. With at least 80 different vaccines in development, many governments are pinning their hopes on a quick solution. However, there are many hurdles to overcome. 

Vaccine development

Firstly, vaccine development is normally a very long process to ensure vaccines are safe and effective before they are used. 

Safety is not a given: a recent dengue vaccine caused heightened disease in vaccinated children when they later were exposed to dengue, while Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine caused the same problem. Nor is effectiveness a given. Candidate vaccines that use novel techniques where minute fragments of the viruses’ genetic code are either injected directly into humans or incorporated into a vaccine (as is being pursued, or could be pursued for COVID-19) have higher risks of failure simply because they haven’t worked before. For some vaccines, we know what levels of immunity post-vaccination are likely to be protective. This is not the case for coronavirus. 

Clinical trials will have to be done for efficacy. This is not optional – regulators will need to know extensive testing has taken place before licencing any vaccine. Even if animal tests are done in parallel with early human tests, the remainder of the process is still lengthy. 

There is also great interest in the use of passive immunization, whereby antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (collected from people who have recovered from infection or laboratory-created) are given to people who are currently ill. Antivirals may prove to be a quicker route than vaccine development, as the testing requirements would be shorter, manufacturing may be easier and only ill people would need to be treated, as opposed to all at-risk individuals being vaccinated.

Vaccine manufacturing

Developers, especially small biotechs, will have to make partnerships with large vaccine manufacturers in order to bring products to market. One notorious bottleneck in vaccine development is getting from proof-of-principle to commercial development: about 95 per cent of vaccines fail at this step. Another bottleneck is at the end of production. The final stages of vaccine production involve detailed testing to ensure that the vaccine meets the necessary criteria and there are always constraints on access to the technologies necessary to finalize the product. Only large vaccine manufacturers have these capacities. There is a graveyard of failed vaccine candidates that have not managed to pass through this development and manufacturing process.

Another consideration is adverse or unintended consequences. Highly specialized scientists may have to defer their work on other new vaccines to work on COVID-19 products and production of existing products may have to be set aside, raising the possibility of shortages of other essential vaccines. 

Cost is another challenge. Vaccines for industrialized markets can be very lucrative for pharmaceutical companies, but many countries have price caps on vaccines. Important lessons have been learned from the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic when industrialized countries took all the vaccines first. Supplies were made available to lower-income countries at a lower price but this was much later in the evolution of the pandemic. For the recent Ebola outbreaks, vaccines were made available at low or no cost. 

Geopolitics may also play a role. Should countries that manufacture a vaccine share it widely with other countries or prioritize their own populations first? It has been reported that President Trump attempted to purchase CureVac, a German company with a candidate vaccine.  There are certainly precedents for countries prioritizing their own populations. With H1N1 flu in 2009, the Australian Government required a vaccine company to meet the needs of the Australian population first. 

Vaccine distribution

Global leadership and a coordinated and coherent response will be needed to ensure that any vaccine is distributed equitably. There have been recent calls for a G20 on health, but existing global bodies such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and GAVI are working on vaccines and worldwide access to them. Any new bodies should seek to boost funding for these entities so they can ensure products reach the most disadvantaged. 

While countries that cannot afford vaccines may be priced out of markets, access for poor, vulnerable or marginalized peoples, whether in developed or developing countries, is of concern. Developing countries are at particular risk from the impacts of COVID-19. People living in conflict-affected and fragile states – whether they are refugees or asylum seekers, internally displaced or stateless, or in detention facilities – are at especially high risk of devastating impacts. 

Mature economies will also face challenges. Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccine will be challenging where inequalities and unequal access to essential services have been compromised within some political systems. 

The need for global leadership 

There is an urgent need for international coordination on COVID-19 vaccines. While the WHO provides technical support and UNICEF acts as a procurement agency, responding to coronavirus needs clarity of global leadership that arches over national interests and is capable of mobilizing resources at a time when economies are facing painful recessions. We see vaccines as a salvation but remain ill-equipped to accelerate their development.

While everyone hopes for rapid availability of safe, effective and affordable vaccines that will be produced in sufficient quantities to meet everyone’s needs, realistically, we face huge hurdles. 

When the H1N1 influenza pandemic struck in 2009, some industrialized countries were well prepared. Many countries’ preparedness plans had focused on preparing for an influenza pandemic and based on earlier alerts over the H5N1 ‘bird flu’ virus, countries had made advanced purchase or ‘sleeping’ contracts for vaccine supplies that could be activated as soon as a pandemic was declared. Countries without contracts scrambled to get supplies after those that already had contracts received their vaccine.

Following the 2009 pandemic, the European Union (EU) developed plans for joint-purchase vaccine contracts that any member state could join, guaranteeing the same price per dose for everyone. In 2009, low-income countries were unable to get the vaccine until manufacturers agreed to let 10 per cent of their production go to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The situation for COVID-19 could be even worse. No country had a sleeping contract in place for a COVID-19 vaccine since nobody had anticipated that the next pandemic would be a coronavirus, not an influenza virus. With around 80 candidate vaccines reported to be in development, choosing the right one will be like playing roulette.

These candidates will be whittled down as some will fail at an early stage of development and others will not get to scale-up for manufacturing. All of the world’s major vaccine pharmaceutical companies have said that they will divert resources to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines and, as long as they choose the right candidate for production, they have the expertise and the capacity to produce in huge quantities.

From roulette to a horse race

Our game now changes from roulette to a horse race, as the probability of winning is a matter of odds not a random chance. Countries are now able to try to make contracts alone or in purchasing consortia with other states, and with one of the major companies or with multiple companies. This would be like betting on one of the favourites.

For example, it has been reported that Oxford University has made an agreement with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, with a possibility of 100 million doses being available by the end of 2020. If the vaccine works and those doses materialize, and are all available for the UK, then the UK population requirements will be met in full, and the challenge becomes vaccinating everyone as quickly as possible.

Even if half of the doses were reserved for the UK, all those in high-risk or occupational groups could be vaccinated rapidly. However, as each major manufacturer accepts more contracts, the quantity that each country will get diminishes and the time to vaccinate the at-risk population gets longer.

At this point, it is not known how manufacturers will respond to requests for vaccine and how they will apportion supplies between different markets. You could bet on an outsider. You study the field and select a biotech that has potential with a good production development programme and a tie-in with a smaller-scale production facility.

If other countries do not try to get contracts, you will get your vaccine as fast as manufacturing can be scaled up; but because it is a small manufacturer, your supplies may take a long time. And outsiders do not often win races. You can of course, depending on your resources, cover several runners and try to make multiple contracts. However, you take on the risk that some will fail, and you may have compromised your eventual supply.

On April 24, the WHO co-hosted a meeting with the president of France, the president of the European Commission and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It brought together heads of state and industry leaders who committed to ‘work towards equitable global access based on an unprecedented level of partnership’. They agreed ‘to create a strong unified voice, to build on past experience and to be accountable to the world, to communities and to one another’ for vaccines, testing materials and treatments.

They did not, however, say how this will be achieved and the absence of the United States was notable. The EU and its partners are hosting an international pledging conference on May 4 that aims to raise €7.5 billion in initial funding to kick-start global cooperation on vaccines. Co-hosts will be France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Norway and Saudi Arabia and the priorities will be ‘Test, Treat and Prevent’, with the latter dedicated to vaccines.

Despite these expressions of altruism, every government will face the tension between wanting to protect their own populations as quickly as possible and knowing that this will disadvantage poorer countries, where health services are even less able to cope. It will not be a vote winner to offer a share in available vaccine to less-privileged countries.

The factories for the biggest vaccine manufacturers are in Europe, the US and India. Will European manufacturers be obliged by the EU to restrict sales first to European countries? Will the US invoke its Defense Production Act and block vaccine exports until there are stocks enough for every American? And will vaccine only be available in India for those who can afford it?

The lessons on vaccine availability from the 2009 influenza pandemic are clear: vaccine was not shared on anything like an equitable basis. It remains to be seen if we will do any better in 2020.

The study of secrecy and spies remain subjects dominated by Anglo-American experiences. In recent years there has been some effort to refocus the lens of research upon ‘intelligence elsewhere’, including the global South. This is partly because of intense interest in the Arab Spring and ‘managed democracy’, placing a wider range of secret services under the spotlight. However, the approach to research is still dominated by concepts and methods derived from studying the English-speaking states of the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance and their European outriders. This article calls for a re-examination of research strategies for Intelligence Studies and for those theorizing surveillance, suggesting that both fields have much to learn from area studies and development studies, especially in the realm of research practice and ethics. If the growing number of academics specializing in intelligence genuinely wish to move forward and examine the global South they will need to rethink their tool-kit and learn from other disciplines. We suggest there is a rich tradition to draw upon.

2019 saw a number of political developments in India that brought into question Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) commitment to one of India’s founding principles: secularism. The fallout from Modi and his party’s revocation of Articles 370 and 35A, updates to the National Register of Citizens and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill have arguably demonstrated that power-sharing arrangements based on group divisions and representations fail to accord adequate protection to minorities in India in line with the country’s constitution.

This panel assesses the capacity of India’s republican framework to withstand the BJP and Prime Minister Modi’s brand of nationalism. What do recent developments tell us about Modi and the BJP’s vision for India and how do we explain this paradox where, despite a strong political centre, the BJP is faced with regional insecurity?

How might India reconcile its behaviour in the domestic sphere with its ambition as an emerging power that supports the rules-based order? And in the year of its 70th anniversary, how compatible has India’s constitution proved with the country’s ongoing religious and cultural divides?

In response to the changing geopolitical landscape in Asia, both China and the United States attempt to alter the regional order in their own favour, both in the economic and security realms. This article shows how diverging views on future arrangements are leading to strategic shifts and increasing tension between these two Great Powers. As part of its quest for Great-Power status, China has been actively pushing its regional initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as well as adopting assertive security policies towards its neighbours. In contrast, in order to counter China's growing influence America's regional strategy is undergoing a subtle shift from ‘rebalancing to Asia’ to focusing on the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region. However, amid an intensifying trade war and other challenges facing the region, China has chosen to moderate its proactive foreign policy-orientation in the past few years. In particular, China has made attempts to downplay its domestic rhetoric, rebuild strategic relationship with India and Japan, and to reassure ASEAN states in the South China Sea. In response to the Indo-Pacific strategy, it would be more effective for China to articulate a more inclusive regional vision and promote an institutional framework that also accommodates a US presence in the region.

Japan's primary objective of the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy is to shape and consolidate regional order in the Indo-Pacific region based on the existing rules-based international order. The concept initially aimed to achieve two different objectives—shaping a regional order in the Indo-Pacific and ensuring the defence of Japan; however, Japan has gradually shifted its strategic focus onto the former, separating national defence from the FOIP concept, which reflects a change in the degree of its commitment to the two objectives. On the one hand, as its overall security strategy, Japan has determined to steadily enhance its national defence by increasing its own defence capabilities and strengthening the US–Japan alliance, while transforming its partnerships with like-minded states, such as Australia and India, into a diplomatic, and potentially military, alignment. This has been brought about by shifts in the regional balance of power, particularly the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States. On the other hand, as part of its FOIP strategy, Japan's attempts to build a new regional order in the Indo-Pacific region aim to defend the existing rules-based order established by the United States from challengers, particularly China. Yet, given the strategic uncertainty over Japan's international coalition-building efforts to create a new regional order, Japan has made its approach flexible; Tokyo is using its ambiguous FOIP concept to gauge other states' responses, understand their perspectives, and change its strategic emphases accordingly—so-called ‘tactical hedging’. Japan has pursued similar means to achieve the two key objectives. Nevertheless, the country's core interest, the defence of Japan, is more imperative than building a regional order in the Indo-Pacific region, and Japan faces different types of challenges in the future.

India has adopted the Indo-Pacific concept with uncharacteristic speed. This article examines India's Indo-Pacific strategy, which evolved out of its earlier ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policies but is much more focused on strategic concerns than on trade or connectivity. As such, the strategy is subset of its China policy, and includes contradictory elements of balancing China by building partnerships with the United States as well as with regional powers, while simultaneously pursuing a reassurance strategy to convince Beijing that India is not really balancing China. The combination of these contradictory elements is characterized as evasive balancing, which is a more useful concept than either pure balancing or hedging for understanding the policies of India and of many other countries in the region that are trying to manage China's rise. However, reassurance strategies rarely work and the combination of balancing and reassurance is even less likely to be viable.

Australia has been among the most prominent advocates of the increasingly popular Indo-Pacific concept. This article argues that Canberra's enthusiasm for the concept stems from its appeal to the two dominant traditions of Australian foreign policy—a ‘dependent ally’ tradition and a ‘middle power’ approach. While these two traditions are typically seen as being in tension, the Indo-Pacific concept provides a rare point of convergence between them. The article begins by outlining the appeal of the Indo-Pacific concept to each of these traditions. Using a case-study of recent Australian policy toward the South China Sea disputes, however, the article then demonstrates that Australia has in practice implemented its stated Indo-Pacific strategy far less consistently than its very vocal support would appear to suggest. This disjuncture is attributed to the growing influence of a third, generally understudied, ‘pragmatic’ Australian foreign policy tradition. Because Australia has been such a prominent champion of the Indo-Pacific concept, the article concludes that this divergence between the rhetoric and the reality of Australia's Indo-Pacific strategy threatens to have a negative impact on the concept's broader international appeal and sustainability, particularly among Australia's south-east Asian neighbours.

This article assesses how south-east Asian countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have responded to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategies promoted by the United States and the other countries in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the ‘Quad’: US, Japan, Australia and India). Their nuanced ripostes imply a persistent commitment to hedging and shifting limited alignments in the face of growing great rivalry and the lack of a clear FOIP vision among Quad members. In the face of external pressure to take sides, the ASEAN states are likely to keep hedging through working selectively with China and the United States. Given the United States' apparent preference to balance China and Trump's disregard for multilateralism, ASEAN's ability to maintain its centrality in the evolving regional architecture is in doubt—despite the Quad countries' (belated) accommodation of ASEAN in their FOIP strategies. However, the success of the US strategy depends on Washington's ability to build and sustain the requisite coalition to balance Beijing. ASEAN has undertaken efforts to enhance bilateral security collaboration with China and the United States respectively. In doing so, ASEAN is arguably seeking to informally redefine its centrality in an era of Great Power discord and its ramifications for multilateralism.

Read all our analysis on the Coronavirus Response

The coronavirus outbreak comes at a difficult time for China’s ruling party. A tumultuous 2019 saw the country fighting an economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. As authorities take assertive steps to contain the virus, the emergency has - at least temporarily - disrupted global trade and supply chains, depressed asset prices and forced multinational businesses to make consequential decisions with limited information. 

Against this backdrop, panellists reflect on the country’s nascent economic transition from 2020 onward. What has been China’s progress towards a sustainable innovation-led economy so far? To what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility? And how are foreign investors responding to these developments in China?

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a damaging economic impact on Asia, potentially the most serious since the financial crisis two decades ago. While early estimates suggest that a recession is inevitable, differing countries in Asia are generally deploying modest fiscal and monetary measures. This is true even in China, compared with the ‘whatever it takes’ approach pursued by Europe and America. 

How effective will these measures be in reviving growth and in easing the pain, particularly on the poor in developing countries in Asia? Is Asia witnessing a sudden but temporary halt in economic activity rather than a prolonged slowdown? At this virtual roundtable, the speakers will consider the likelihood of a recovery for trade in the region and will explore what lessons can be learned from countries like Singapore, who seem to be successfully managing the health and economic aspects of COVID-19. 

This event is online only. After registering, you will receive a follow-up confirmation email with details of how to join the webinar.

Only a few months into 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has presented a huge challenge for China’s ruling party against an already tumultuous 12 months of economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. The crisis looks set to worsen a deteriorating relationship between the US and China as the two countries battle to avoid further economic ramifications. It has also undermined President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic political legitimacy and economic growth.

The panellists will examine the wider geopolitical fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and discuss China’s future economic planning. How will the COVID-19 outbreak further strain the US-China relationship? What effect will this have on global trade and vulnerable supply chains at a time when cooperation is needed more than ever? And to what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility?

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations and selected giving circles of Chatham House. If you'd like to attend, please RSVP to Linda Bedford.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated geopolitical tensions that, in part, have arisen from US-China tensions. At a time when the world needs strong and collective leadership to fight the coronavirus, both countries have been locked in a battle of words characterized by escalating hostility, polarizing narratives, blame and misinformation. Caught in the crossfire, many people of Chinese descent across differing countries have reported an increase in xenophobic attacks.

Middle powers such as the UK and Australia have swerved between recognition of the global collaboration needed to solve this pandemic and calls for China to be held ‘accountable’ for its initial response. Others such, as France and Japan, have been trying to foster international cooperation. 

Against this context, speakers will discuss China’s response to the crisis, including the initial delay and Beijing’s later containment strategies. How do we best assess the delay amidst all the heated rhetoric? What was the response of people within China to the measures? Does COVID-19 mark a point of no return for US-China relations? How might this impact on relations between US allies and China? And what kind of China will emerge from this current crisis?

This virtual roundtable has been co-convened by Chatham House and the Aga Khan Foundation.  

While conducting research in fragile and conflict-affected contexts has always presented challenges, the outbreak of COVID-19 creates additional challenges including travel restrictions, ethical challenges, and disruptions to usual modes of working. This virtual roundtable will explore how organizations can adapt their research and monitoring and evaluation models in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This event aims to discuss the research methods being used to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis; the important role of technology; and ways to engage policy and decision-makers during this time.