WIMAYA (e-ISSN: 2272-3760)   Vol.02/No.01, January-June 2021 

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Research Article 
 

Securitization of Public Policy and Pandemic: 
Taiwan’s Case Against Covid-19  

 
Kai-Chun Wang1 

School of Advanced International Studies 
Johns Hopkins University  

wangkaichun1995@gmail.com 
 

Abstract 
Taiwan’s relatively better performance in the 
early stages of the on-going COVID-19 
pandemic can largely be accredited to the rapid 
mobilization of public resources and the fast 
restructuring of government agencies to meet 
the pandemic-fighting coordination demand, 
but these measures are only possible when a 
community adopts a serious attitude followed 
by serious actions achieved via securitization of 
the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper attempts 
to compare and contrast the securitization of 
pandemic response and management of 
Taiwan, the United States, and Japan to 
highlight the importance of how even 
developed states with equal or better health 
infrastructure than Taiwan, by contextualizing 
the pandemic into different security scenarios 
has resulted in the performance gap against 
COVID-19. 
Keywords: Securitization, Taiwan, Japan, 
United States, COVID-19 
 
 

I. Introduction 

As of December 31, 2020, the 

confirmed case per million for the Coronavirus 

Disease (COVID-19) in Taiwan is 33.55, Japan 

1,864.47, and the United States (U.S.) standing 

at 60,722.67. In terms of death per million, the 

figure for Taiwan is 0.29, Japan 26.03, and the 

U.S. with 1,063.81 (OurWorldData, 2021)2. 

 
1 The author is a student at the Johns Hopkins 
University 
2 The data on confirmed cases and confirmed 
deaths shown in these visualizations is updated 
daily and is published by Johns Hopkins University, 
the best available global dataset on the pandemic. 
The composition of the OurWorldData team consist 

Taiwan’s successful fight against the spread of 

COVID-19 deserves not only international 

attention, but also should be an interesting 

case study in the field of securitization, 

particularly on the aspect of public health 

issues and related policy-makings and their 

implementations. 

The first part of this paper concerns 

with the theoretical introduction of 

securitization and a brief summary of the legal 

instruments available to and attitudes towards 

infectious diseases by Taiwan, the U.S., and 

Japan. The second part deals with identifying 

the contributing factors resulted in the 

performance gaps by the three states and will 

conclude with the argument that the 

international community though already 

possess sufficient securitizing legal 

instruments but fall short on ensuring the 

political cohesion both from the governmental 

to social level to effectively implement the 

existing legal instruments and policy options to 

prevent the worsening of the pandemic. 

 

 

II. National Security and Securitization 

One of the most cited definitions of 

securitization is by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver 

and Jaap de Wilde, the three scholars argue 

that in a scenario when a securitizing actor 

uses a rhetoric of existential threat and 

thereby takes an issue out of what under those 

conditions is “normal politics,” a case of 

securitization emerges (Buzan, et al., 2003 pp. 

24-25). Securitization in practice is thus often 

associated with the important yet broad 

political questions of what counts as security? 

of the following: Research and data: Hannah 
Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Diana Beltekian, 
Edouard Mathieu, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, 
Charlie Giattino, Cameron Appel and Max Roser. 
Web development: Ernst van Woerden, Daniel 
Gavrilov, Matthieu Bergel, Jason Crawford, and 
Marcel Gerber. 

mailto:wangkaichun1995@gmail.com


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And in what ways are such security concern 

being sufficiently justifiable to deserve special 

devotion of resources? 

In most instances, given the vast 

majority of social actors, from individuals to 

various communities, our actions are usually 

framed within the context of a nation state, as 

the entity of state, and the organization of 

government remain the dominant actors in our 

political discourses. Thus, the existential 

threats, once being defined by the 

governments as such, are frequently 

contextualized as matters of national security. 

In the case of infectious diseases and viruses, 

they can be problematized as either a public 

health and social hygiene issue, a development 

issue, a human rights issue, a risk management 

issue or as a security threat (Rollet, 2014). The 

way countries frame these diseases thus 

determined the effectiveness of government’s 

responses and resources applied to deal with 

the issues. In the on-going COVID-19 pandemic 

for instance, governments of Taiwan, the U.S., 

Japan and many others are quick to 

contextualize the measures to COVID into 

rhetoric such as ‘war against COVID’, and in 

Taiwan the ‘fight against COVID’ are expressed 

as ‘Kang-Yi (抗疫)’, a portmanteau of ‘fight or 

struggle (抗)’ and ‘pandemic or disease (疫)’, 

that demands solidarity of the citizens and 

abnormal measures to deal with. 

 

a. Taiwan’s Securitization of Pandemic 
Response 

Taiwan began its securitization of 

infectious disease in the wake of Entrovirus 71 

(EV71) in 1998. The inability of Taiwanese 

authority to fight against EV71 led to the 

creation of Taiwan Center for Disease Control 

(Taiwan CDC) on July 1, 1999, centralizing the 

disease control command chain, replacing the 

Bureau of Communicable Disease Control 

(BCDC), the National Quarantine Service 

(NQS), and National Institute of Preventive 

Medicine (NIPM), all agencies that received 

criticism for the lack of coordination during the 

EV71 crisis (Rollet, 2014 p. 149). The Severe 

Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic 

from March 2003 to July 2003 that followed 

led to another reform focused on legislative 

changes and institutional reconfiguration. 

Taiwan passed numerous amendments to the 

‘Communicable Disease Control Act’ to 

systematize quarantine and monitoring 

mechanisms after SARS. These amendments 

authorized government to designate general 

hospitals to specialized treatment facilities 

when necessary. Another Institutional reform 

came when the ‘Organization of the Center for 

Disease Control, Ministry of Health and 

Welfare Act’ was amended, increasing the 

makeup of Taiwan CDC leadership with more 

epidemiologists and public health experts.  

The new laws and agency were put 

into immediate action when on January 31, 

2020, Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command 

Center (CECC), a temporary and specialized 

task force assembled when Taiwan CDC deems 

a serious public health threat is immanent, 

enacted Article 54 of the Communicable 

Disease Control Act.  The law states during the 

period of the existence of CECC, government 

agencies at various levels, in accordance with 

instruction of the CECC commanding officer, 

may expropriate or requisite private 

instruments of productions (land, products, 

buildings, devices, facilities, etc) for disease 

control practices, with adequate 

compensations shall be made to appropriate 

parties. In addition, the government had also 

classified medical grade face masks as 

necessary resources under Article 251.1.(3) of 

the Republic of China (Taiwan) Criminal Code, 

which made the hoarding of necessary 

resources without justification with the 

intention to raise the transaction price will be 

subjected to criminal liability.  

In terms of the military, as far back as 

2002, the Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry 



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of National Defence (MND) Report devoted 

one special section to explain its role in 

epidemic situations. The military is tasked with 

the primary attention to self-protection and 

environment sanitation of barracks, while also 

assisting local government in managing 

epidemic outbreaks (Ministry of National 

Defenes Republic of China, 2002) upon 

requests. 

 

b. United States’ Securitization of Pandemic 
Response 

The U.S. also possesses abundance of 

legal instruments at disposal whenever 

emergency situations demand special actions 

from the government in both federal and state 

level. The U.S. began to explicitly recognize 

infectious disease as a growing threat to 

national and international security when 

George W. Bush administration introduced the 

National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza in 

2005. The Obama and Trump administrations 

subsequently introduced National Strategy for 

Countering Biological Threats (2009), 

Executive Order on the Global Health Security 

Agenda (2016), the National Biodefense 

Strategy (2018) and Global Health Security 

Strategy (2019) to reaffirm the idea that 

pandemic can and should be securitized 

(Burwell, et al., 2020).  

  Under the U.S. legal 

framework, under the provision of the 

Administrative Provision Act (APA) the federal 

agencies typically have two types of 

rulemaking methods; the formal and informal 

means. Formal rulemaking requires 

congressional directions to create new 

regulations, informal rulemaking refers to the 

modification, changes, or creation of new rules 

that have previously promulgated (The Library 

of Congress, 2020). However, one exception is 

the emergency rule which federal agencies 

may introduced provided they must 

demonstrate that following the typical 

rulemaking process would be contrary to the 

public interest, and many agencies have used 

COVID as the compelling justification. 

As for resource control and 

distribution, besides from congressional 

appropriation of funds for economic 

recoveries. The executive branch also has the 

Robert T. Stafford disaster relief and 

emergency assistance act of 1988 (the Stafford 

Act), which gives the President significant 

power in time of emergency, one such power 

is the ability to utilize federal funds in support 

of individual state National Guard units. 

Furthermore, the Defense Production Act of 

1950 (DPA) also invests the President power to 

order U.S. companies to produce specific 

products such as surgical masks and ventilators 

in the case of COVID. 

 

c. Japan’s Securitization of Pandemic Response 

Japan’s Infectious Diseases Prevention 

Act of 1998 designated the Ministry of Health, 

Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) as the primary 

central government agency to respond to 

major health crisis in the country. Under the 

Act, central and local governments, and the 

institutions under them are given the duty to 

monitor and report on the outbreak of 

infectious diseases and coordinate to curb 

more infections (Umeda, 2015). However, 

Japan’s constitution does not grant the same 

level of authority as Taiwan and the U.S., to the 

central and local governments even with 

emergency laws are enacted. In order to 

further clarify the respective responsibilities 

between central and local government, the 

New Influenza Special Measures Act of 2012 

(NISMA) was passed. Though NISMA enables 

local governments to request residents not to 

leave their home and designated facility 

managers to restrict usage of facilities such as 

school, social welfare facility, entertainment 

facility and others, or stop events hold in 

previously mentioned locations. Nevertheless, 



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the NISMA does not foresee any penalty in 

case of non-compliance (Ejima, 2020). 

Furthermore, the previously mentioned 

Infectious Diseases Prevention Act of 1998 

emphasized on a mutual coordination 

between the central and local officials, leading 

to criticism of Japan adopting a de facto 

“federal” system to respond to a pandemic 

crisis with most of the duties and actual 

implementation of pandemic prevention 

measures falling under the responsibility of 

local governments (Harukata, 2021). In terms 

of resource management, the Act on 

Emergency Measures for Stabilizing Living 

Conditions of the Public of 1973 gives the 

government power to restrict the reselling of 

vital resources such as surgical masks thus 

ensure the simplification of supply chain from 

retailers to consumers. However, Japan lacks 

the legal tool to forcefully make private 

companies to comply with specific production 

demands but can only encourage desirable 

productions via subsidies (Ministry of 

Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), 2020). 

As of the general population, a 

research based on a detailed surveying effort 

indicated a high level of compliance with 

government instructions and trust to official 

sources. The scholars recruited 11,000 

participants to answer series of questions 

related to their preventive measures, COVID 

information sources, and the degree of 

trustworthiness of the sources. The final 

findings show that about 85 percent reported 

practicing the social distancing measures 

recommended by the government including 

more females than males and older than 

younger participants. The information from 

the central and local governments were 

received by 60 percent of the participants and 

was deemed trustworthy by 50 percent (Muto 

K, 2020). In contrast to the American case, the 

findings suggested an initial success in the 

audience accepting the government’s 

contextualization of COVID-19 as a threat and 

thus willing to comply to securitizing policies 

such as adhere to government guidance. 

 

 

III. The Performance Gap 

In an investigation performed by 

Curley and Herington on the reception and the 

possible translation of infectious diseases as 

security issues from one context to another, 

the two scholars conducted case studies on 

Vietnam and Indonesia on their performance 

in dealing with the avian flu. Their research 

focuses particularly on the extent to which the 

domestic context influences the process of 

constructing an issue as a threat. The study 

concluded that the avian flu was successfully 

securitized in Vietnam, primarily due to the 

centralized state organization, enabling the 

message of the central authorities to influence 

domestic opinion with little resistance. In 

contrast, in Indonesia, administrative 

decentralization consistently frustrated the 

securitizing moves undertaken by Jakarta’s 

elites. This case study highlighted the 

audience, aka citizens, are conditioned in 

specific reference of the situation, in this case, 

Vietnam regarding the fight of the flu as a 

matter of the defense of national reputation 

and economic wellbeing, where Indonesia’s 

audience is contextualized in the rhetorical 

framework of postcolonial injustice, resulted in 

a performance gap compare to Vietnam 

(Curley, et al., 2011 pp. 144-166). Thus, 

defining the crisis in the right type of threat, or 

rhetoric of threat, and the receptiveness of the 

public to the threats are critical in determining 

the effectiveness of securitization policy. This 

chapter will be divided into the following two 

major aspects; the concentration of power and 

the contextualization of the threat and its 

reception, each indicating the features shared 

or different from Taiwan, the U.S. and Japan. 

 

 



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a. Centralization of Executive Power 

Though Taiwan and Japan both share 

the trait of being unitary states, meaning the 

presence of strong central government, the 

gap in legal instruments and authorities 

resulted in Japan’s executive power falling 

short of Taiwan and the U.S., a federal state 

instead of a unitary one with local 

governments hold relatively more autonomy. 

To combine and compare the findings 

in the first part of this paper, the executive 

branches in Taiwan and U.S. theoretically have 

more legal power to allocate resources and 

forcefully enforce quarantine rules. The 

Japanese government on the other hand lack 

proper measures to enforce strict pandemic 

prevention rules. As previously mentioned, 

Taiwan and U.S. both have legal tools to 

directly or indirectly control pandemic 

prevention-related resources, for examples; 

Taiwan’s Article 54 of the Communicable 

Disease Control Act, and U.S. Defense 

Production Act of 1950. Taiwan and the U.S. 

also have more authority to penalize violation 

of lockdown measures or people under 

quarantine. Japan however, though the central 

and local governments can declare a state of 

emergency, but in the case of Tokyo, the 

declaration of the state of emergency does not 

carry any penalties or legal liability (Tokyo 

Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters 

2020).  

In short, the emergency powers within 

the Taiwan and U.S. constitutional frameworks 

enable the concentration of powers in special 

situations, but in the case of Japan even during 

emergency status, the executive powers are 

still shared between the central and local level, 

which can jeopardise the effectiveness of 

pandemic prevention efforts. 

 

 

 

 

b. The Contextualization of the Threat and Its 
Reception 

Having a security policy is one thing 

but having an effective implementation of the 

securitized policy is another, the way countries 

contextualize a threat can affect the 

effectiveness of the policy goals and 

implementations.  

In the U.S. during the first months of 

the COVID-19 pandemic, a COVID task force by 

the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) 

criticized U.S. communication campaigns were 

scattered, inconsistent, and too often 

politicized rather than grounded in science and 

public health. The CFR further indicated that 

American society more generally consist of 

intense ideological divisions that often 

complicated a common understanding among 

its citizens on the risks of COVID and the most 

effective strategies to combat it. Individuals 

and groups retreated to their partisan corners, 

and the pandemic became a political football, 

with many people even questioned the reality 

of COVID. (Burwell, et al., 2020) Consequently, 

the threats constructed by the American 

domestic context were not only just threat to 

public health, but also particular social values, 

values in which some fear will be undermined 

by overtly emphasizing public health. This 

conflicting phenomenon resulted in the lack of 

coordination between federal agencies to 

states, states to states, and even federal 

agencies against one another.  

Taiwan and Japan on the other hand, 

have population more willing to accept 

government narratives due to high degree of 

trust or having high threat perception to the 

potential harms a pandemic may cause. Thus, 

most of Taiwanese and Japanese view the 

securitizing measures against this pandemic as 

compliance with government instructions that 

are based on scientific findings instead of 

politically motivated ones. 

 

 



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VI. Conclusion 

The success of Taiwan’s pandemic 

prevention in the pre-vaccine period should be 

accredited to a relatively more thorough 

translation of pandemic securitization policy 

compare with Japan and the U.S. Essentially 

Taiwan happens to have the right combination 

of strong centralized professional authority 

and more receptive citizens. Though the three 

countries have similar level of development, 

but their differences on the strength of legal 

instruments and domestic contextualization of 

COVID as a threat created this performance 

gap.  

While Taiwan and the U.S. have 

stronger and more enforceable legal 

instruments, the overtly politized pandemic 

policy made the U.S. unable to have effective 

coordination at the early stages of the 

pandemic. Japan on the other hand, though 

did not suffer for politization, its relatively 

fragmented legal instrument made its 

response slow and uncoordinated compare to 

Taiwan.  

As the COVID pandemic continues, 

more research and debates are expected to be 

performed in the most rigorous manner as the 

international community begins to reflect on 

how such modern health crisis can be avoided 

in the future. It is in the author’s sincerely hope 

that in the face of infectious diseases, Taiwan’s 

case can serve as a strong example where the 

right legal instruments must be accompanied 

by the proper domestic contextualized threat 

perception that enables the securitization 

policy to achieve its maximum efficiency and 

effect. 

 
 

Works Cited 

Burwell, S. M., Townsend, F. F., Bollyky, T. J. & 

Patrick, S. M., 2020. Improving 

Pandemic Preparedness: Lessons From 

COVID-19’. Council on Foreign 

Relations, Independent Task Force 

Report No.78.  

Buzan, B., Wæver, O. & Wilde, J. d., 2003. 

‘Security: A New Framework for 

Analysis’ (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 

Publishers, 1998), pp. 24–5. See also 

Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions 

and Power: The Structure of 

International Security. Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press. 

Curley, M. G. & Herington, J., 2011. The 

Securitization of Avian Influenza: 

International Discourses and Domestic 

Politics in Asia. Review of International 

Studies, 37(1) 

Ejima, A., 2020. Japan’s Soft State of 

Emergency: Social Pressure Instead of 

Legal Penalty. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://verfassungsblog.de/japans-

soft-state-of-emergency-social-

pressure-instead-of-legal-penalty/ 

Harukata, T., 2021. Japan’s Fragmented COVID 

Response: A Systemic Failure of 

National Leadership. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-

depth/d00695/ 

Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry 

(METI), 2020. Current Status of 

Production and Supply of Face Masks, 

Antiseptics and Toilet Paper. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://www.meti.go.jp/english/covid

-19/mask.html 

Ministry of National Defenes Republic of China, 

2002. Taiwan National Defense Report 

2002. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://www.ustaiwandefense.com/t

dnswp/wp-

content/uploads/2020/02/Taiwan-

National-Defense-Report-2002.pdf 

Muto K, Y. I. N. M. T. M. W. K., 2020. Japanese 

citizens’ behavioral changes and 



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preparedness against COVID-19: An 

online survey during the early phase of 

the pandemic. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/arti

cle?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234292 

OurWorldData, 2021. Coronavirus Pandemic 

(COVID-19). [Online]  

Available at: 

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavir

us 

Rollet, V., 2014. Framing SARS and H5N1 as an 

Issue of National Security in Taiwan: 

Process, Motivations and 

Consequences. Extrême-Orient 

Extrême-Occident, Volume 37. 

The Library of Congress, 2020. United States: 

Federal and State Executive Responses 

to COVID-19. [Online]  

Available at: 

https://www.loc.gov/law/help/covid-

19-responses/executive-responses-

covid-19.pdf 

Umeda, S., 2015. Japan: Legal Responses to 
Health Emergencies. Library of 
Congress. 

  


	I. Introduction
	II. National Security and Securitization
	a. Taiwan’s Securitization of Pandemic Response
	b. United States’ Securitization of Pandemic Response
	c. Japan’s Securitization of Pandemic Response

	III. The Performance Gap
	a. Centralization of Executive Power
	b. The Contextualization of the Threat and Its Reception

	VI. Conclusion
	Works Cited