A response to JĂĽrgen Gerhards and Michael ZĂĽrn
The systemic competition between China and liberal democracies has reached a new level. In addition to economic growth and development, managing the COVID-19 crisis has become a new benchmark for comparing the performance of alternative scripts. JĂĽrgen Gerhards and Michael ZĂĽrn have called out China as the winner in containing the pandemic and mastering its economic and social consequences. They do not attribute China’s success to its autocratic system and to state capitalism. Pointing to the exceptional performance of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, Gerhards and ZĂĽrn argue that it is the shared approach of “testing, tracking, and isolating,” which explains the East Asian success.