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A debate emerged among members of public administration academia soon after COVID-19 appeared on the roles and measures that governments ought to deploy to prevent infection. One prevalent discourse is the strength of “strong government” in the fight against the virus—the administrative capacity to launch prompt, appropriate and effective actions that entail collaboration with citizens. A notable development in governance is that new public management (NPM) principles, such as the value of money and the pluralisation of service delivery, are gradually put aside when governments urgently need to curb the spread of infection. The roles of bureaucracy and centralised action are re-emphasised in the policymaking and implementation of anti-epidemic measures. Such a trend allows us to examine if the COVID-19 public health crisis has fundamentally reversed the trend of government retreat in public service within neoliberal regimes since the 1980s.

For this research, the authors selected two “strong governments” in Asia—Hong Kong and Taiwan—by showing how administrators outline their anti-pandemic strategies, examining the role of government in coordinating responses and how bureaucracy interacts with the other two key domains of the governance mechanism: civil society and the market. These two offshore Chinese capitalist economies and pluralistic societies are perceived to have “strong government capacity” in the fight against COVID-19, presumably as a key attribute to their success confining the spread of infection during the early stages of the first outbreak. Both societies reported low infection rates and low mortality rates until September 2020. The authors browsed databases developed by scholars (Cheng et al., 2020; Hale et al., 2020) and referred to two “rubrics” to assess and compare government actions in both places in response to COVID-19. The authors itemised, categorised and counted the policy actions in both places according to the rubrics, noticed that the policy footprint appeared in over two-thirds of indicators of proactive government interventions and identified double-digit counts in nearly half of the categories.

The authors found that both governments attempted to establish strong stewardship and quick measures to contain the infection. The pattern of “strong government” is, however, not the same as that superficially exhibited. Taiwan took limited steps to regulate business activities but proactively intervened and coordinated the supply of hygienic utilities. Hong Kong launched aggressive attempts to reduce human mobility but remained non-active despite the “face mask run” in society. The “strong government” aspect also received divergent reactions from society. There was extensive cross-sectoral collaboration under the centralised “National Team” advocacy in Taiwan, and there has been no record of local infection for over 10 months. The Hong Kong government was repeatedly doubted for its undesirable stewardship in anti-epidemic measures, the effectiveness of policy interventions and the impartiality of law enforcement. Spontaneous actions during the health crisis from civil societies and private markets were noted, but they seemed uncoordinated with official attempts.

The initial findings enable us to rethink correlations between state capacity and legitimacy in the fight against the virus and its development post-COVID-19. Apparently, Taiwan and Hong Kong demonstrated a “re-expansion” of their public sector during the public health crisis, but not in the same format. This can be understood based on their varying regime values and administrative systems. The pandemic has been a catalyst, pushing both regimes back to their original track of public administration establishments. The concept of “path dependence” might explain the initial development and project the longer-term transformation of the public sector in both places.

This study aims to examine Hong Kong’s responses to COVID-19, arguing that Hong Kong’s relatively low infection rate is due to self-discipline of citizens together with the enforcement measures introduced by the government.

This study reviewed the government policy announcements and the prevailing scholarly analyses on Hong Kong society during COVID-19.

It starts by examining the partial lockdown and control measures since mid-January, and the roles of different government units in enforcement were examined and assessed. Suppression of viral outbreak in Hong Kong should primarily be attributed to the appropriate lockdown and quarantine actions of the government.

However, outperformance of the frontline professionals and the highly aware, self-disciplined and mutually aided citizens in the community are also the key to the “interim success” by June 2020 in the highly accessible and densely populated city.

This study aims to explore the community strengths/ weaknesses and the opportunities/ threats of the Nepalese communities in Hong Kong that have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The infection of COVID-19 among the ethnic minorities (EM) population in western democracies was reported higher, and it was wondered whether it was due to structural discrimination of the underprivileged.

This study is situated in Hong Kong during the peak of pandemic in 2020–2021. The authors followed the work of an EM service agency and interacted with their Nepalese clients to explore their reactions in coping with the sudden physical and economic adversities and examined their capacity amid the pandemic.

The authors noticed their effective self-mobilization that was strategically facilitated by veteran social workers and thus have strong resilience compared to other EM clusters in the territories.

The ways of their interactions offer useful insights for the authors to examine the prevailing strategy for achieving the mission of social inclusion in Hong Kong with 8% of the EM population.