Crisis Rhetoric and Policy Change in China

This book explores how China's political system responds to crisis. A crisis is an episode whose impact cannot be controlled merely by astute on-the-ground incident management, particularly in cases involving widespread doubt about the legitimacy of established policy paradigms or the political order as a whole. Crisis can create "e;political windows"e; for advocacy groups challenging established policies in pluralist democracies. The political battle between competing definitions of an uncertain and ambiguous situation among the various actors provides them with crisis-induced opportunity space for dramatic policy change. However, the process of crisis-induced policy change, mainly by crisis framing, in non-west regimes like China has not been adequately addressed. As China's leadership foregrounds legitimacy in "e;victory"e; over COVID-19, and a new era of climate change disasters begins, this dynamic model of crisis and recuperation will offer food for thought for scholars of Chinese andglobal politics.