Joel N. E. Christoph 柯卓尔
Introduction
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization labelled the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, as the number of confirmed cases reached 118,000 in 114 countries, with 4,291 deaths. Amid the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, cited poor communication and a lack of co-ordination between states and between national, provincial and local authorities as one of many areas where governments were falling short.
Over the next three weeks, the challenges of international co-ordination and the threats to the lives of citizens worldwide were laid bare as the number of cases surpassed 750,000 and the death toll exceeded 35,000. Some states have sent foreign aid. For instance, China has sent ventilators, surgical masks, and doctors to countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, after having received tons of personal protective equipment, including from neighbors with a record of antagonistic relations, when the epicenter of the pandemic was in Hubei province. In contrast, other states have announced and reversed policies on border closures, troop deployment, or bans on entry to foreign nationals. For example, the United States announced and later cancelled plans to deploy over ten thousand troops to its border with Canada, while relations between Japan and South Korea soured after Japan unilaterally imposed a two-week quarantine on all visitors from South Korea amid its viral outbreak and South Korea retaliated by ending visa-free entry for only Japanese citizens out of 102 countries that blocked entry to its own citizens. In general, evacuations of nationals in foreign countries, withdrawing from military engagements overseas, postponing diplomatic visits abroad, protecting domestic firms from foreign acquisition, pressuring neighbors to toughen lockdowns, condemning foreign media for smearing national image, denouncing foreign suppliers of defective equipment, attributing the origin of the virus to a foreign government, and timetables filled with video conference meetings have all become marked features of diplomacy and international relations during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Nevertheless, one element of the crisis that has been largely overlooked is the international dimension of economic responses to the shocks from the virus, the measures to monitor and contain it, and the policies to sustain demand and supply during prolonged shutdowns. One reason for this is that decisions to take stimulus measures have largely lagged behind the continued spread of the virus. As a result, most major stimulus efforts were taken in the last two weeks of March, as the coronavirus, its case numbers, subsequent deaths, and the estimations of the length and depth of economic damage reached virtually every country and territory around the world.
This essay examines the global economic response to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic. I first examine the economic shocks of the coronavirus and the ensuing government policies to monitor and contain it. Next, I consider the shifts in economic policy in different contexts, with a focus on China, the Eurozone, and the United States. Finally, I conclude with an outlook to possible implications and to open questions about the future that the 2020 coronavirus crisis has raised.
30. March 2020
Joel N. E. Christoph 柯卓尔 is a French-Japanese Master’s student in the Tsinghua University-Johns Hopkins University SAIS Global Politics and Economics Dual Degree Program. He is a Young Ambassador at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, a COP25 Youth Delegate of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate and a Digital Civilization Fellow at the Oxford-Hainan Blockchain Research Institute. You can contact the author at christophjn10@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn.