Performance public policy: China in COVID-19

COVID-19 created a worldwide public policy vacuum due to the lack of scientific knowledge concerning effective disease control and vaccine. In this policy vacuum governments often sought to display themselves effective protectors of the public’s health and safety despite a less than effective or complete policy performance. From this perspective is useful to compare actual policy outcomes as well as analyse the symbolic performance in public policy. This article presents an analytical framework of performance public policy with three elements, including constructing policy achievement, providing political goods, and establishing ‘normative’ commitment in both domestic politics and foreign policy. The research argues that Chinese government and CCP have been able to maintain a relatively high degree of social coherence and domestic support during the pandemic by employing performance public policy, a combination of materials strength, political propaganda, nationalist discourse, and assertive foreign policy.