Liberty or Safety: Cultural Differences Encountered by a Chinese Student During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Guowei (Willas) Jia

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On March 13, 2020, Washington University decided to close down its campus earlier than I expected. Still, most American students in my residential community were not pessimistic about the prospect of COVID-19 spreading in the US, though it spelled a looming pandemic for me. I took the earliest flight I could catch back to China. Upon arriving in Beijing, staff in heavy protective suits accompanied me through endless rounds of temperature checks and official forms to fill in.

Before I returned home, my parents moved into their friend’s place so that I could quarantine alone for two weeks. To supervise those in mandatory quarantine, the local government installed CCTV cameras outside our apartment compound entrances. During my quarantine, I saw on the news that the Chinese government had repatriated a Chinese-Australian for jogging illegally in her densely populated community during quarantine, refusing to adhere to quarantine policy and potentially infecting neighbors.[1] However, her noncompliance was not entirely unreasonable. After all, policies for international travelers vary from one country to another. For example, at St. Louis Lambert Airport, it seemed that the only thing out of the ordinary was staff telling travelers not to hug anyone due to COVID-19. By contrast, travelers at Beijing Capital Airport were too afraid of infecting coronavirus to even speak to another through their blue face masks and white hazmat suits. Though accustomed to the strictness of Chinese government, even I felt slightly uncomfortable with the installation of a camera at my compound entrance because I felt that it violated my privacy. Nevertheless, I’m also glad that the Chinese government committed to protecting my well-being as well as that of all its citizens by examining and quarantining every traveler without exception.

Having experienced COVID-19 both in the U.S. and in China, I realized that no means of containing the virus could be a solution perfectly adaptable anywhere. However, this does not mean that anyone has the right to judge others for different attitudes toward COVID-19. Judgment politicizes the pandemic and makes people less open-minded towards possible containment solutions. For example, Alexandra L. Phelan, a specialist in global health law at Georgetown University, said of the pandemic, “these community-level quarantines and the arbitrary nature in which they’re being imposed and tied up with the police and other officials is essentially making them into punitive actions — a coercive action rather than a public health action.”[2] Phelan’s words express some Americans’ worry for excessive governmental intervention in the US. In mid-April, citizens planned “reopen-America”-styled protests because they were worried about an impending financial crisis and a lack of freedom under prolonged quarantine measures. By contrast, such concern is less popular in China. Most of my family and friends who returned to China from the US felt obliged to comply with governmental quarantine policies though some of the policies were not considerate of our individual liberties. The Chinese version of pandemic shutdowns is unacceptable to many Americans, but they provide valuable insight into potentially effective pandemic containment measures if only the US officials could modify these methods according to the Americans’ needs. Thus, it is over-politicalization to simply criticize enforced containment strategies, including the involvement of police, as some flaw of political structure in China. British police forces are also addressing thousands of potential violations against quarantine rules without causing general dissatisfaction in the country, which shows that legal enforcement of pandemic containment policies could be adapted to citizens in western countries.[3]

Given an urgent need to contain the pandemic, there is no need to argue between the “Chinese way” and the “American way”— which reaction to the pandemic is the most appropriate. Reviewing Thomas Hobbes’ understanding of freedom for my modern political thought class essay, I recall that freedom means both the ability to act on one’s will and the capacity to secure oneself from harm. Varying cultural backgrounds lead the Chinese and the Americans to evaluate freedom from different perspectives. The former has experienced SARS, another respiratory disease that infected hundreds of Chinese people in 2003, so watching official enforce policies such as quarantine and mandatory reporting of infected cases is no new measure. The Chinese believe that exchanging the freedom to act according to one’s individual wishes for the freedom from illness is tolerable. Moreover, the Chinese are accustomed to a central government with authority over aspects of their daily life. By contrast, the freedom to exercise one’s individual liberties under most circumstances seems to be the core of the American constitution on its surface. The pandemic requires citizens from all countries to be open-minded to improve strategies for pandemic management and other emerging issues, which means adopting an open exchange of ideas and fostering cooperation between countries rather than endless public opinion wars. Since the 1980s, China has been reforming its planned economy and thus contributing to the world’s fight against poverty. In a similar way, the US should be able to find its own methods to contain the virus through learning from the experiences of China, South Korea, and Singapore in pandemic containment.

Kind-hearted people whom I met in the U.S. and in China taught me that for being open-minded and reconciling cultural and ideological differences, the best avenue is to show one’s respect and concern for others through our actions. I am grateful that my Residential Community Director Olivia helped me find a single room to live when my relative, a hospital worker in China, advised me to do so to lower my risk of infection. Moreover, seeing me wear my mask, my suitemates asked me how I was doing well rather than immediately staying away or judging me for wearing Personal Protective Equipment that, according to CDC recommendations back in March, only the sick and healthcare workers should wear but were already the norm in my home country.[4] Volunteers in my community back home delivered food and necessities to me. Such acts of kindness convinced me that even though people in the U.S. and in China think and act differently, they can express the same kindness and respect toward their fellow citizens. Thus, I, in turn, try to understand their different opinions and communicate my ideas. I stopped judging those initially unwilling to wear masks and became more patient in justifying the ideas behind them in an effort to persuade them to wear PPE.

Cultural and political differences do make it difficult for one to understand the thoughts, motivations, and actions of others. However, if one remembers that they ought to respect both individuality and humanity, that it isn’t always one or the other, our differences can be beneficial even in this tumultuous period of COVID-19. From our differences arise varying strategies that permit us to learn from one another and better our circumstances. There is no perfect solution to the pandemic, but learning from our differences can greatly aid the way in which we recover from the pandemic.