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China’s Crisis Governance and Evolving State-Society Relations during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ao, Ning (2023) COSM40 20231
Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University
Abstract
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... (More)
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. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Ao, Ning
supervisor
organization
course
COSM40 20231
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
China, zero-COVID policy, state-society relations, civil rights, interest alignment, evolutionary governance
language
English
id
9125986
date added to LUP
2023-06-16 10:01:43
date last changed
2023-06-16 10:01:43
@misc{9125986,
  abstract     = {{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.}},
  author       = {{Ao, Ning}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{China’s Crisis Governance and Evolving State-Society Relations during the COVID-19 Pandemic}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}