Regional Resilience in Times of a Pandemic Crisis: The Case of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

The notion of resilience to analyse how fast systems recover from shocks has been increasingly taken up in economic geography, in which there is a burgeoning literature on regional resilience. Regional resilience is a place-sensitive, multi-layered and multi-scalar, conflict-ridden and highly contingent process. The nature of shocks is one important impact factor on regional resilience. Arguably, so far, most literature on regional resilience has dealt with the financial crisis in 2008/2009. In this research note, we will analyse both the particular characteristics of the current COVID-19 crisis, as well as its effects on regional recovery and potential resilience in China, where it started. We conclude that a complex combination of the characteristics of the current COVID-19 crisis, the institutional experience of dealing with previous pandemic and epidemic crises, government support schemes, as well as regional industrial structures, might potentially affect the recovery and resilience rates of Chinese regions.