Explaining the Legitimacy of the Chinese Dynamite Zero-COVID Policy based on Weber and Foucault

Abstract

When the novel coronavirus turned into the emergent events of public health, different countries adopted different policies to prevent the epidemic. While most countries opt for the herd immunity, China has defined a new approach according to its national situation called the Dynamite Zero-COVID policy. The academic community has analyzed and evaluated the policy’s phychological and social impacts on mental health to varying degrees, however, the mechanism of the Dynamite Zero-COVID policy and the interaction between the public and the government still lacks theoretical analysis. Therefore, this paper will apply Foucault and Weber's theory to explain the important operational logic of China's epidemic prevention policy. After providing a descriptive analysis of the embedded legitimacy and automatic obedience, the articleshows that the unique legitimacy of the Dynamic Zero-COVID policy guarantees the operation of the policy through building up the authority of regulations and fostering the autonomy.