● The Communist Party has shifted public attention away from early failures in Wuhan towards subsequent success in controlling the epidemic.
● Public cynicism towards the government co-exists alongside respect for its technocratic competence and ability to mobilize people and resources.
● The party has been able to use response failures in some liberal democracies to promote the advantages of China's authoritarian system.
Two months ago, as Covid-19 was ravaging China, many wondered whether the crisis would threaten the legitimacy of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party (CCP). Today, with the epidemic seemingly under control in China – even as prominent liberal democracies struggle to respond effectively – the net impact of the crisis may have been to strengthen public confidence in the CCP. Though many Chinese citizens know about the Wuhan government's early failures, these failures are balanced against the central government's subsequent successful mobilization against the epidemic.
Assessing public opinion in China is difficult, given pervasive censorship and intolerance for public dissent. Chinese public opinion is diverse not only between people and groups but often also within single individuals. For example, many Chinese distrust official figures showing a dramatic decline in new cases, while also believing that the situation has improved dramatically. The phenomenon of local officials manipulating statistics to satisfy ambitious directives from Beijing is well-known from before the virus. On the other hand, the public can directly observe that life is returning to normal, while there are few signs of widespread but unacknowledged infections. In general, people take specific figures with a grain of salt while believing the basic story those numbers tell.
The making of a martyr
The party has largely succeeded in shifting public attention away from the early failures in Wuhan. In response to the extraordinary outpouring of public anger over the death of Li Wenliang, the party has sought to co-opt Li's story into a broader narrative of CCP-led collective sacrifice.
Li was the Wuhan ophthalmologist-tuned-
The party's handling of Li's case and the public response to it illustrates the ambiguities and contradictions within Chinese public opinion. Many Chinese recognize that the silencing of Li – and the Wuhan government's initial cover-up of the outbreak – is symptomatic of fundamental problems in China's political system. These include lack of free speech, weak transparency, and the tendency of local officials to prioritize their own reputations in Beijing above the public good. On the other hand, much of the public is likely to regard the apology to Li and the sacking of senior officials in Wuhan and Hubei province as some form of accountability, even if they also regard the party's canonization of Li with cynicism.
Effective response sparks national pride
Anger over the Li incident also co-exists with enormous pride in how China mobilized to combat the epidemic. The bravery of medical workers who were sent to Wuhan from other regions; the technical competence of Chinese scientists who quickly sequenced the virus' genome and shared this information with the World Health Organization; the dedication of express couriers on electric scooters who delivered groceries and other essentials to needy citizens stuck in home quarantine; the re-purposing of factory assembly lines to produce personal protective equipment – the government's role in coordinating these efforts at least partially offsets the damage to the CCP's legitimacy from the early failures in Wuhan.
At some level, many Chinese believe that the same authoritarian mechanisms that produced the early failures in Wuhan also contributed to subsequent successes in epidemic control. One example is the party's so-called “grid management” system, which was created in the Mao era for surveillance and social control. Though this mechanism has since largely faded into irrelevance, the “residential committees” in each urban apartment compound were well suited for identifying infected individuals, enforcing home quarantine, and keeping those quarantined supplied with essential goods.
The party has also permitted some public criticism of the epidemic response, within boundaries. Non-official media such as Caixin published hard-hitting exposés about failures in Wuhan and doubts about official statistics. Many of these reports were later censored but not before circulating widely. Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing and now a think tank scholar, published an essay calling for changes to China's public health infrastructure.
Contrast with other countries
China's propaganda apparatus is promoting the idea that China’s response to the outbreak has been far superior to that of Europe and the US, thus underscoring the advantages of the country’s authoritarian system over liberal democracy. Chinese censors have also permitted baseless conspiracy theories that the US brought the virus to China, and a significant share of the public may now believe such theories. Some Chinese officials and state media have openly promoted these theories, though this line of propaganda appears to have tapered off following a phone call between Xi and US President Donald Trump on 27 March.
Chinese foreign sales and donations of medical equipment – including to rich countries in Europe and North America – reinforce a sense of national pride (while propaganda organs and diplomats largely gnore the EU's donation of 56 million tons of material to China in February). With most new Covid-19 cases in China in recent weeks coming from foreign arrivals, this pride has verged into outright chauvinism and racism, especially after China imposed a near-total ban on foreign visitors, including by those with valid visas. One online cartoon, later censored, showed Chinese workers in hazmat suits sorting foreign “trash” into recycling bins.
To a significant extent, the epidemic may have simply entrenched whatever political views a Chinese citizen already held. Li's death created an environment where critics felt emboldened to express long-held views publicly. Conversely, China's success in combating the epidemic emboldened Han nationalists and chauvinists. In any case, the Covid-19 crisis appears increasingly unlikely to weaken Xi's personal status or the CCP's hold on power.
