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Managing the COVID-19 pandemic in varied frameworks of trust, transparency, and governance capacity: evidence from China, the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

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Abstract

By illuminating the mode of health crisis management in the four distinct jurisdictions of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the UK, this article considers how varying trust-transparency mixes provide a context for understanding the public governance of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article builds on publicly available surveys, governmental documents, and observations of the assessed administrations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study covers the period between January 2020 and April 2022. We conclude that though trust is an important element for controlling the virus, transparency is the precondition for a longer-term resilient and sustainable policy response. Trust-transparency mixes matter because they feed through into governance capacity. While transparency is the prerequisite for a longer-term robust and sustainable policy response, trust is essential for managing the virus in the short term. Governance capacity needs to be understood as a contingent, context-specific quality, in the sense of a legitimate steering mechanism.

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Data availability

We do not analyze or generate any datasets, because our work proceeds within a theoretical approach.

Notes

  1. The concept of governance capacity in general is drawn from older literatures on governance. For example, Cole (2008) defines governance capacity as signifying new forms of political steering and multi-actor coordination. Mees and Driessen (2011) investigate the juridical/legal capacity, political capacity, managerial capacity, resource capacity, and learning capacity. Innes and Booher (2002) deal with the inclusivity of governance capacity.

  2. We acknowledge that in the context of mainland China, the validation of the reported infections and deaths is challenging. In the absence of any alternative authoritative information about the case numbers and COVID-19 morbidity in China, we rely on the official numbers reported by Beijing. Reputable sources like the WHO, Johns Hopkins University, and Our World in Data have relied on and reported the same sources and numbers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of International Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

    Dionysios Stivas

  2. Sciences-Po, Lyon, France

    Alistair Cole

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  1. Dionysios Stivas
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Dionysios Stivas and Alistair Cole. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Dionysios Stivas, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dionysios Stivas.

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Stivas, D., Cole, A. Managing the COVID-19 pandemic in varied frameworks of trust, transparency, and governance capacity: evidence from China, the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Asia Eur J 23, 81–98 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-025-00719-2

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