The Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak affects societies worldwide, not least in East Asia and Europe. However, the impact of the virus and the way in which governments and societies have responded to the current health crisis varies widely and makes for interesting questions to explore. This is why the LeidenAsiaCentre has set up several projects which investigate and analyse the impact of the outbreak on societies in East Asia and Europe, as well as on the relationships between them, and how the health crisis is approached differently from region to region.
Project 1: How Asia Confronts COVID-19 through Technology (May 2020)
More and more governments in the West, including in the Netherlands, are preparing the use of health and contact tracing smartphone applications in order to counter COVID-19. The introduction of such technologies evokes complex and important questions on their efficacy, the potential impact on privacy and fundamental rights, and the extent to which this provides a precedent for greater interference into personal lives in the future. These questions are, however, not exclusive to Europe: Asian governments have equally rolled out app-based public health initiatives. Given their earlier exposure to the COVID-19, they are further advanced in addressing these questions, albeit with strong influence from domestic political and cultural considerations. As such, they provide useful insights for European public health policymakers, but also an interesting window into these locations’ ability to manage crises and the extent to which they are able to to conceptualise and implement technology-based solutions. Therefore, the LeidenAsiaCentre has surveyed situations in Mainland China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan and Singapore, which has resulted in an extensive report.
An executive summary of the report can be found here.
Project 2: Manufacturing Normalcy – How Wuhan Citizens Working in Large and Small Enterprises Cope with Their Lives and Work After the Lockdown
Tan Yujing (Leiden University) has written an article for the LeidenAsiaCentre on how Wuhan is opening up after the end of the lockdown. She describes how two citizens, one working in a state-owned company and the other in a private enterprise, conceptualise their lives and working conditions during the period of “recovery”, as well as their expectations for normal daily life moving forward. Tan intends to show how these two citizens are coping with the policy-driven changes influencing their lives and work: how they understand the post-lockdown governance in China and what personal strategies they are developing in this period. Click here to read the article.
Project 3: Corona onder controle? De Chinezen willen door! (Dutch)
Er wordt wereldwijd druk gespeculeerd of China een voorsprong heeft wat betreft het wennen aan ‘het nieuwe normaal’ van de post-corona samenleving. Zal het Chinese bedrijven lukken om snel weer op te starten en hoe werkt dat in een wereld die sterk verbonden is? Wat verandert er op logistiek gebied? Blijft globalisering het meest kenmerkende element in de economie van de eenentwintigste eeuw? Het LeidenAsiaCentre vroeg Valérie Hoeks om deze vraagstukken te bekijken vanuit haar positie als ervaringsdeskundige uit het bedrijfsleven die dagelijks in contact staat met Chinese ondernemers.
Dit leverde de volgende interessante publicatie op (klik op de link op het bestand te openen): Corona onder controle? De Chinezen willen door! Hoe China werkt volgens ‘het nieuwe normaal’ en hoe Europa daarop in kan springen.
Sinoloog Valérie Hoeks ondersteunt managementteams tijdens integratieprocessen in post M&A en joint ventures scenario’s. Ze brengt met haar bedrijf China Inroads Europese bedrijven en hun Chinese partners op strategisch en operationeel niveau op een lijn, gericht op langetermijn succes. Met 20 jaar ervaring in de Chinese markt binnen verschillende sectoren waaronder hightech, chemie, energie en agri&food, werkt zij nauw samen met het hoger management om complexe China-gerelateerde vraagstukken op te lossen.
More LeidenAsiaCentre projects related to COVID-19 will be announced here soon, so keep an eye on this page.
