ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the risk governance framework that academic experts in China’s emergency management establishment created, using ideas local and foreign, following the 2003 SARS crisis. It was a framework that provided the key ideational resources enabling the establishment to build the new organizational field. The term “risk governance framework” is derived inductively from my analyses, describing the ideas associated with risk and governance that were consequential to the creation of the emergency management field. Counter to the “hollowing out” effect observed elsewhere, the indigenous risk governance framework in the Chinese context shows the party-state remained as the ultimate legitimate manager of risk, at least within the domain of emergency management. In this chapter, I also recount the rise of the concept of “governance” and its significance to the establishment when coupled with ideas around risk. In particular, I highlight the flexibility and power the Chinese governing elites exercised in what they meant by “risk governance,” as well as the modes of legitimacy embedded in their use of such terms.
