Ning Ao
Doctoral student
China’s Crisis Governance and Evolving State-Society Relations during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Author
Summary, in English
Existing studies on China’s COVID-19 response have gravitated to a macro-level,
formal institutional analysis, focusing either on the effectiveness of the policy in early stage virus containment or on the growing negative impacts of COVID policy practices on China’s socio-political landscape at the late stage. Using serial interviews
accompanied by online observations and documents, this thesis redirects its attention
to the micro-level, individual response to China’s crisis governance and COVID policy
practices. Informed by Kellee Tsai’s evolutionary framework, it traces Chinese citizens’
changing attitudes towards the policy and its implementation and studies the extent to which such attitudinal changes reflect their perceptions of the state and affect state society relations in China. The findings of the thesis show that although Chinese
citizens displayed growing antipathy towards the zero-COVID policy, it does not
necessarily lead to their questioning of the Chinese polity and the party-state’s
legitimacy. Instead, they are caught in a dilemma of their evolving perceptions of the
state and their entrenched, real-life interactions with it, where a trade-off tends to be
made based primarily on their calculation of personal interests rather than their
improved political literacy.
formal institutional analysis, focusing either on the effectiveness of the policy in early stage virus containment or on the growing negative impacts of COVID policy practices on China’s socio-political landscape at the late stage. Using serial interviews
accompanied by online observations and documents, this thesis redirects its attention
to the micro-level, individual response to China’s crisis governance and COVID policy
practices. Informed by Kellee Tsai’s evolutionary framework, it traces Chinese citizens’
changing attitudes towards the policy and its implementation and studies the extent to which such attitudinal changes reflect their perceptions of the state and affect state society relations in China. The findings of the thesis show that although Chinese
citizens displayed growing antipathy towards the zero-COVID policy, it does not
necessarily lead to their questioning of the Chinese polity and the party-state’s
legitimacy. Instead, they are caught in a dilemma of their evolving perceptions of the
state and their entrenched, real-life interactions with it, where a trade-off tends to be
made based primarily on their calculation of personal interests rather than their
improved political literacy.
Department/s
- Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University
Publishing year
2023-06-16
Language
English
Links
Document type
Master's Thesis
Publisher
Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University
Topic
- Other Social Sciences
- Political Science
Keywords
- China Studies
- policy implementation
- COVID -19
- National Identity
Status
Published