Designing Emergency Management: China's Post-Sars Experience, 2003-2012

This book looks at the then-nascent emergency management sector in China, specifically from 2003-2012, that arose from the 2003 SARS crisis and subsequently set the stage for its responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covering not only the amended and new laws and regulations at the national level, the book also includes the rearrangement and creation of the organizational structures, as well as the response plans for individual emergencies that were either recrafted or produced during this period. Beyond chronicling the milestones and products of this transformation, this book highlights key ideas and ideals that guided the various stakeholders, from the governing elites to the policy experts in this process.

The book demonstrates how definitions of emergency management and emergency categories, as well as other ideational objects were initially either absent or weakly developed, but were refined and to the extent that they helped corral disparate actors into the new organizational field of emergency management.