Contents
Introduction and background
1. A short history and thematic overview
Part I: First wave containment measures
2. China: Community policing, high-tech surveillance, and authoritarian durability
3. Taiwan: democracy, technology, and civil society
4. Vietnam: Marshalling state and non-state actors
5. Spread of information versus spread of virus: China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
6. Borders and entry controls in Asia
7. Central banks and their limits in a pandemic
Part II: Emergency powers
8. Governing through contagion
9. Pandemics and emergency powers in Asia
10. Japan: keeping the death toll to the minimum
11. Thailand: emergency responses or more social turbulence?
12. India: federalism, majoritarian nationalism, and the vulnerable and marginalized
Part III: Technology, science, and expertise
13. International health regulations and compliance in Asia
14. Can technology and privacy co-exist in a pandemics?
15. Singapore: technocracy and transition
16. South Korea: democracy, innovation, and surveillance
17. Hong Kong: the healthcare professions and the outbreak
Part IV: Politics, religion, and governance
18. Religion amid the pandemic: a Buddhis case study
19. Bhutan: The role of the constitutional monarch in a public health crisis
20. Cambodia: public health, economic, and political dimensions
21. Indonesia's response to the pandemic: too little, too late?
22. Malaysia: improvised pandemic policies and democratic regression
23. Myanmar: pandemic in a time of transition
21. Sri Lanka: Pandemic-catalyzed democratic backsliding
Part V: Economy, climate, and sustainability
25. Governments and business
26. Nationalism, consolidation, and rationalization in the aviation industry
27. Asian trade and supply chain linkages
28. Mongolia: after successful containment, challenges remain
29. Reset or revert in the new climate normal
30. Southeast Asian workers in a just-in-time pandemic

Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts is an edited collection of original essays on Asia’s legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in a matter of months, swept around the globe, infecting millions. In a matter of weeks, the unimaginable became ordinary: lockdowns of cities and entire countries, physical distancing and quarantines, travel restrictions and border controls, movement-tracking technology, mandatory closures of all but essential services, economic devastation and mass unemployment, and government assistance programs on record-breaking scales. Yet a pandemic on this scale, under contemporary conditions of globalization, has left governments and their advisors scrambling to improvise solutions, often themselves unprecedented in modern times, such as the initial lockdown of Wuhan. Identifying cross-cutting themes and challenges, this collection of essays taps the collective knowledge of an interdisciplinary team of sixty-one researchers. Beginning with an epidemiological overview and survey of the law and policy themes, it covers five topics: first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability.