China’s COVID Pivot and PRC-Taiwan Comparison with Tsung-Mei Cheng

After three years of strict pandemic controls, China suddenly reversed its zero covid policy last December, as omicron spread rapidly in the country. A top Chinese epidemiologist claimed that the current wave of the outbreak has gotten 80% of the population, which is 1.1 billion people, sick. But the true impact of this wave is still a mystery as the Chinese government continues to underreport covid cases and deaths. Meanwhile, dozens of countries have maintained restrictions on travelers from China. What does China’s reopening mean for the rest of the world and its foreign relations? How do we compare mainland China’s pandemic management to Taiwan’s?

Join host Zoe Leung, senior director of research at the Bush China Foundation and guest Tsung-Mei Cheng, health policy research analyst at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs to discuss these important issues.

Ms. Cheng’s current research focuses on cross-national comparisons of health systems in the United States, Europe and East Asia; health reforms in the U.S., China and Taiwan; health technology assessment and comparative effectiveness research; health care quality, financing and payment reform, including evidence based clinical guidelines and clinical pathways and pay for performance in East Asian health systems. She is co-founder, with Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, of the Princeton Conference, an annual national conference on health policy that brings together government, the private sector and the research community on issues affecting health care and health policy in the United States.