Explaining the Variance of City Response to the COVID‐19 Pandemic in China: A Matter of Leadership?

When COVID‐19 emerged in China, local leaders reacted differently to the health threat. Some acted immediately, some waited for higher levels of authority to act. The timing of local decision‐makers mattered: quick interventions limited the damage wrought by the virus. In this paper, we ask why some local leaders acted quicker than others. We study whether the administrative experience of Chinese leaders affected the timing of initial crisis decision‐making. Drawing on extant literature, we identify three types of administrative experience that might affect the timing of crisis decisions at the local level: personal experience with previous crises, job diversity, and the presence of a local network. Our analysis demonstrates that all three factors are positively associated with the timing of early action in the face of the COVID‐19 epidemic. It appears that experienced leaders are wont to act quicker in the face of an emerging threat.