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

今年是该项目基础工作的一年，主要是收集与大战略、疫情政治、个别国家的新冠肺炎战略相关的资源，并安排适当的研究援助。这一点之所以重要，有几个原因，但最主要的原因是，新冠肺炎代表着国际关系中一个根本性的新因素，也代表着深刻的风险和机遇，尤其是在亚太地区。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可信地声称是一个独特的“成功”故事，但建立叙事的竞争一直很激烈。在该项目的核心国家中，有三个国家的政策和关于疫情的辩论发生了重大变化：美国于2022年实施了国家防备计划，日本放松了旅行限制和其他建议，以及在灾难性的感染浪潮之后，中国迅速改变了从“零COVID”到更灵活的遏制政策。所有这些都将在未来几年受到审查。主要目标是收集关于这一主题的文件和学术知识，既准备将伴随任何已发表成果的文献审查，也确定辩论的性质和优先事项，特别是经常从事叙事构建的政策行为者之间的辩论和优先事项。

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.