Racing to Villages: On-site Visits by Government Officials and COVID-19 Response in Rural China

The Chinese government dispatches its officials to local areas to conduct field surveys and investigations before making policy formulation and implementation decisions. This article studies how these field visits reinforce COVID-19 response at the grassroots level. The author argues that visits by government officials pull together resources to invest in areas that are critical for rural development. By employing the Guangdong Thousand Village Survey data from 2020, this article deduces that visits by Chinese government officials significantly improved COVID-19 response in rural China.