During the COVID-19 crisis, what explains the variation in policy adoptionamong Chinese provincial governments? To answer this question, we gathered data on twenty-five COVID-19 containment policies used in China from 31 December 2019 to 18 March 2020. We conducted state-of-the-art multilevel pooled event history analysis to allow us to control for policy heterogeneity. Our results demonstrate that variation in policy adoption during the crisis largely follows politics as usual: policies diffuse from the centre to the provinces in the same way that non-crisis policies diffuse.
Scholars who study governance in authoritarian countries have long highlighted the importance of fiscal capacity and pressure from the central government in determining the responsiveness and policy changes of subnational governments. However, policy orientation is also important in shaping how subnational governments react to a crisis. Using provincial governments’ responses during the 2018 Chinese vaccine scandal, I find strong evidence that an emphasis on public health, as well as early responses by neighboring provinces, increased the likelihood of a quick response.