A Relational Reflection on Pandemic Nationalism

Drawing on the case of Wuhan, this article considers how nationalist discourses evolved in the Chinese context during the COVID-19 pandemic. It adopts a relational perspective to argue that, just as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed countries' vulnerability to diverse forms of nationalism and the danger that this presents, it also reveals an irony: how despite being treated as a 'solution' to the pandemic, nationalism can only exist and thrive insofar as its alter or Other-represented by the novel coronavirus itself and, for some countries, the 'China threat'-also thrives. To prevent this from becoming a vicious cycle, the article contends that nationalism is no solution and that new thinking on coexistence is the vaccine needed for securing the post-COVID-19 world order.