System Shock: Nonlocal Grassroots Response to COVID-19 at Ground Zero, Wuhan

Abstract

China’s policies and regulations vis-à-vis the nonprofit sector meant that very limited grassroots action took place during COVID-19’s first stages, and most came from those social organizations heavily managed and coordinated by local government . . . or by citizen self-help groups. These local GONGO chapters and local nonprofit organizations indeed played an instrumental role in Wuhan’s response to the crisis. But it was a collection of nonlocal nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups, with little professional experience in disaster relief and insufficient resources and local networks, that in the end emerged and managed to deliver aid.