Pandemic Narratives in the Asia-Pacific: COVID-19 and the Contest over Global Status

这一年是该项目的基础工作，主要是收集与大战略、大流行政治、个别国家的COVID-19战略有关的资源，并安排合适的研究援助。这一点之所以重要，有几个原因，但主要是因为COVID-19代表了国际关系中的一个全新因素，以及深刻的风险和机遇，特别是在亚太地区。它的长期影响可能最终被视为微乎其微，特别是如果没有一个国家能够毫无疑问地声称自己是一个独一无二的“成功”故事，但建立叙事的竞争一直很激烈。在该项目的三个核心国家中，关于这一流行病的政策和辩论的重大转变具有变革性：美国将于2022年实施《国家防范计划》，日本放宽旅行限制和其他限制，以及在灾难性的感染浪潮之后迅速发生的变化，从“零冠状病毒”到中国更灵活的遏制政策。 所有这些都将在未来几年内受到仔细审查，主要目标是收集关于这一专题的文献和学术资料，以便编写将随任何已发表的成果一起发表的文献综述，并确定辩论的性质和优先事项，特别是在经常参与叙述性建设的政策行为者之间。

This was a year for foundational work on the project, largely in collecting resources related to grand strategy, the politics of the pandemic, COVID-19 strategies in individual countries, and arranging for suitable research assistance. This has been important for several reasons, but mostly because COVID-19 represented a fundamentally new factor in international relations, as well as profound risk and opportunity particularly in the Asia-Pacific. Its long-term effects might ultimately be viewed as minimal, especially if no country can credibly claim to be a singular "success" story, but the competition to build narratives has been fierce.Among three of the countries that are central to the project, major shifts in policies and debates about the pandemic have been transformational: the implementation of the National Preparedness Plan in the US in 2022, the relaxation of travel restrictions and other advisories in Japan, and the rapid change, following a catastrophic wave of infections, from a "zero COVID" to more flexible containment policies in China. All of these will bear scrutiny in the coming years.The key goal has been to collect documentation and scholarship on the topic, both to prepared the literature review that will accompany any published outcomes and also to establish the nature of debates and priorities especially among policy actors often engaged in narrative construction.