Health Problems, World Institutions, and China’s Approach to Pandemic Outbreaks

Abstract

Over the past two decades, several factors have amplified the risk of emerging infectious diseases spreading beyond national and regional borders. Concerns have been raised over Southeast Asia’s environmental, social, and demographic specificities and its traditional aversion to accepting global and formal instruments of international governance. With its large size population and high economic growth, China will shape international health-security policy at the local, regional, and global levels. This chapter explores China’s participation in that policymaking by considering its embeddedness in and compliance with the International Health Regulations and their custodian agency, the World Health Organization. The investigation is relevant for the broader international relations agenda, as a fundamental question of the last twenty years concerns the implications of the rise of China and whether the country is challenging the rules-based international order created after the Second World War.