Abstract
Comparing the mode of health crisis management in the four distinct
jurisdictions of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, this
article considers how varying trust-transparency mixes provide the
context for understanding the public governance of the Covid 19
pandemic. The case of Covid 19 illustrates a trust-transparency paradox,
whereby trust requires transparency (witness the reaction to early
attempts in China to deny the virus and control information), but
transparency can undermine trust (insofar as it focuses attention on the
malfunctioning of liberal democracies and their uneven management of the
crisis). Trust (inter-personal, civil society, political) is key to
controlling the virus in the immediate sense, while transparency (and
openness) is the precondition for a longer term resilient and
sustainable policy response. The relationship between transparency and
trust makes most sense in the context of open societies, where these
concepts can be meaningfully investigated and correlated. The task of
disinterested political leadership falls particularly on the shoulders
of the main democracies that should work to guarantee global health
governance.