A View: The cultural roots of China’s success against Covid-19

At the heart of China’s success in handling the pandemic is a very different relationship between government and the people to that in the West. In China and other East Asian societies they enjoy an intimate, familial relationship whose roots lie in Confucianism. It is fatuous and ignorant to describe this as authoritarian, as the West does. In contrast, Western society is based on individualism. It is clear which has worked and which has failed in response to the pandemic.