Who writes the pandemic? State power, individual subjectivity, and the history of the present in China's COVID-19 response.

In this article, I employ Michel Foucault's notion of the 'history of the present​​​​​​' to examine how state power and individual experiences intersected during China's COVID-19 pandemic. This study focuses on the dynamics of power/knowledge that shaped norms of health, risk, and responsibility under the Zero-COVID regime. While the government sought to monopolise knowledge production through strict lockdowns and digital surveillance, online ethnographic observations revealed that individuals did not simply accept these narratives. By searching, sharing, and debating personal accounts of infection and medical access, particularly during the abrupt policy shift in late 2022, individuals developed counter-narratives that challenged official discourses. I argue that China's pandemic governance exemplifies authoritarian biopolitics, which disciplines life through centralised truth-making while simultaneously depending on individuals to embody these norms. The collapse of Zero-COVID exposed the fragility of this order, as people improvised alternative forms of knowledge that both relied on and unsettled official framings. This tension reveals the limits of coercive governance and the persistence of individual agency in redefining the meaning of life and health during public health crises.