Social Contagion presents the untold story of the COVID-19
outbreak in Wuhan. Chuang, a collective of communists living inside
and outside China, chronicle the struggles of everyday people caught
between a lethal virus and a repressive state. They argue that
China’s rapid but fragile economic growth has created the social
and biological conditions for new and deadly viruses, of which
COVID-19 was merely the latest iteration. Through on-the-ground
interviews, reports, and analysis, Social Contagion gives us a
piercing portrait of the simultaneously draconian and ineffectual
response of the Chinese state, as well as the self-organizing
survival strategies of ordinary Chinese workers. Chuang concludes
that the pandemic has enabled a new mode of counterinsurgent
governance, one rooted in decades of institutional experimentation
and an emergent theory of statecraft.
