China Social Mobilization in the Prevention and Control of Major Epidemic Diseases: Experience, Challenges and Inspirations

Social mobilization is an important way to build consensus and promote social participation. The form of social mobilization changes with the changes of social characteristics and main tasks in different historical stages. Social mobilization plays an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19 epidemic. The key elements for the effective mobilization of this disease are: the Party's centralized and unified leadership, the value orientation of putting the safety of people's lives and health first, active publicity and public opinion guidance, close reliance on the people, and prevention and control in accordance with the law. The outbreak also highlights challenges facing current social mobilization: active social participation by social organizations is developed but immature; the demands on the authority of mobilizers have become higher; rumors are easy to spread and change the direction of social mobilization with the help of the Internet. Therefore, under the background of modernization of national governance system and governance capacity, it is necessary to promote interaction between the Party and the government in social mobilization with the people as the main body, it is also necessary to take core socialist values as the greatest common denominator for building consensus and put social mobilization under the framework of the rule of law.