About the Event:

Since the first case was identified in Wuhan, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world, causing an unprecedented public health crisis in human history. In the global fight against COVID-19, various public health measures have been implemented, affecting billions of people’s day-to-day lives. Yet the feasibility and effectiveness of those measures vary across different sociocultural contexts and political regimes.

This lecture provides preliminary results from the surveys we conducted in Wuhan during the city’s lockdown period (Feb-March 2020, N=4,234), in Hong Kong (August 2020, N=1,890), and the United States (Oct-Nov 2020, N=4,407), and their follow-ups in March 2021. It will focus on the communities and trust in government across societies to offer some theoretical and empirical insights to explain the diverse responses to, and implications of, this global crisis.

About the Speaker:

Xiaogang Wu is Yufeng Global Professor of Social Science, and the Founding Director of Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER), the Head of Social Science Area at NYU Shanghai, and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Wu joined NYU Shanghai from the HKUST, where he was Chair Professor of Social Science and Public Policy.  

Prof. Wu is a leading scholar in research on Chinese inequality and social stratification. He has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including some top journals in sociology. He has received numerous highly competitive research grants and fellowships from the most prestigious funding agencies in the world, including the US National Institute of Health, US National Science Foundation, European Research Council, and the Hong Kong RGC Collaborative Research Fund. He has been the Principle Investigator of the “Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics” (HKPSSD) since 2009, also working with colleagues in Shanghai University on a similar project, “Shanghai Urban Neighborhood Survey” (SUNS). Prof. Wu has been serving as the Chief Editor of the Chinese Sociological Review since 2011. He also holds an appointment as a Global Scholar at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024.

Moderator: Qin Gao, Professor and Director of China Center for Social Policy, Columbia School of Social Work

This event is part of the 2021-2022 lecture series on “COVID-19 Impacts and Responses in China and Beyond” and is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.