Public health emergency plans reflect the strong determination of the Chinese government to prevent, control, and eliminate the hazards of public health emergencies. In order to explore whether the public health emergency plan in rural communities can be effectively implemented and play its due functions, based on Smith’s policy implementation process theory, we have conducted a field study in 44 townships from 22 provinces across China. We find that rural communities, as the main battlefields for pandemic prevention and control, face the problem of ritualization of public health emergency plans, resulting in a state of ‘substantial system ritualization’. From the realistic scene back to the theoretical discussion, this study theoretically classifies ritualization into functional-failure ritualization, functional-delay ritualization, functional-vacancy ritualization, and functional-devaluation ritualization. Regardless of the type of ritualization, the direct cause is that institutional rules don’t play their authoritative role in solving practical problems, and the key to solving such problems is the “law-based governance”. This study aims to explore the generation mechanism of the ritualization of public health emergency plans in rural communities, and at the same time summarize and extract some insightful new viewpoints and new knowledge.

rural community, public health emergency, emergency plan, ritualization