Dr. Li Zhang was interviewed by The Diplomat on her new book on The Origins of COVID-19: China and Global Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2021).
Li Zhang on China, COVID-19 and Global Capitalism
When searching for the origins of the pandemic, we shouldn’t overlook the role played by capitalism in paving a path for the disease.
In “The Origins of COVID-19: China and Global Capitalism,” Li Zhang, a visiting assistant professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine, pushes past nationalistic tussling over the origins of COVID-19. Moving beyond “narrow cultural, political, or biomedical frameworks” Zhang instead focus on the overarching, global forces that underpin modern life — capitalism, consumerism, privatization, and industrialization — and contributed to the emergence of COVID-19.
“The hallmarks of modernity and economic development in China, celebrated as the instruments used by the state to successfully control the epidemic, are at the root of this and other emerging diseases with pandemic potential,” she writes in the book’s prelude, a theme which repeats itself through the short but incisive text. And these hallmarks of modernity are not exclusive to China. By focusing on the global systems that underpin modern life — and enable diseases with pandemic potential to spread — Zhang does not get bogged down in the geopolitical blame game that has so distracted the world.
In the following interview with The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz, Zhang discusses the pandemic, state responses to it, and the role of capitalism in seeding the ground for its rapid spread.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/li-zhang-on-china-covid-19-and-global-capitalism/