Target Zero COVID: Analyzing Change in State-Society Relations in China during the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unparalleled challenges and opportunities for state-society relations in China. This thesis analyzes how civil society responded to the crisis, focusing on specific events, such as the public outcry on social media after the death of “Wuhan’s whistleblower” Dr. Li Wenliang in February 2020 and the protests against the Zero-COVID Policy in late 2022. The main research question is whether the emergency prompted Chinese civil society to voice radical demands (e.g., political change and freedom of speech) or reinforced its subjugation to the leadership, with an operational field limited to non-threatening areas (e.g., welfare and the environment). Therefore, the paper does not seek to predict the future of civil society in China but to describe the tendencies that emerged amidst the achievement of the Zero COVID target. To answer this question, it adopts a mixed-methods approach that combines academic papers, articles, essays, and social media posts as data sources. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter provides a historical and social background from Deng to Xi, focusing on the most relevant developments for state-society relations and investigating the country’s peculiar authoritarian regime. The second examines the major occurrences in state-society dynamics during the crisis, highlighting people’s conflicting attitudes toward the government, including both trust and opposition. Lastly, the third chapter explores how technology was increasingly used as a tool of social control during the pandemic by delving into the concept of digital authoritarianism.