A survey published online by the Contemporary China Journal on May 27 found that trust in the central government had fallen significantly in September 2022, after Shanghai was locked down for two months, compared with March of that year, just a few weeks before the lockdown.
The authors, Yue Guan from Aarhus University in Denmark, Lei Guang from the University of California, San Diego (USCD), and Liu Yanchuan and Li Lianjiang from Lingnan University in Hong Kong, analyzed eight online surveys targeting urban Chinese residents.
The surveys, which surveyed around 1,000 respondents each, were conducted between May 2019 and September 2022 by the China Data Lab at the Center for 21st Century China in UCSD’s School of International Policy and Strategy.
Respondents were asked to rate their trust in the central government but, unlike similar surveys that have been conducted, were not asked about their opinion of local governments.
The researchers were interested in the “rally effect,” a political science term that describes the tendency of governments to garner support when a country faces an external crisis.
The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown of more than 10 million people in Wuhan was “the only major domestic political event that may have had a significant impact on trust in the central government,” triggering a rallying effect, the study said.
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Fear no more: People in Chinese city of Wuhan start to weather coronavirus pandemic
Fear no more: People in Chinese city of Wuhan start to weather coronavirus pandemic
The researchers found that average trust in the central government reached an all-time high of 8.9 in May 2020, one month after Wuhan’s lockdown was lifted. For the next two years, the number remained above 8.5, significantly higher than in the 2019 survey.
The authors argued that the high level of trust was due to the fact that “the government had accomplished the seemingly impossible task of containing the virus within the country” and official propaganda praising Beijing’s achievements in fighting the pandemic.
The researchers also cited the large number of coronavirus deaths reported in other countries at the time, which they said “provided sufficient reason for the Chinese people to continue to rely on their government for protection.”
“It has not only undermined political trust among those directly affected, but also political trust across the country,” they wrote.
“By early 2022, repeated and frequent lockdowns had already caused harassment and suffering, eroding people’s patience and trust. The Shanghai lockdown in spring 2022 dealt a decisive blow to public trust.”
The two-month-long shutdown affected Shanghai differently than other cities, and played a key role in causing public trust in the central government to plummet, researchers said.
“Unlike residents of other cities who had little voice, Shanghai residents were able to speak up,” the researchers wrote.
“Through audio and video clips on social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat and Douyin, they continued to expose the increasingly insane control measures and the widespread suffering and growing discontent that resulted.
“Social media has pierced the information bubble inflated by censorship, and voices from Shanghai have revealed to people across the country what is really going on.”
The impact of Shanghai’s lockdown was key to the widespread protests that erupted in several cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu, in November 2022, according to the researchers.
The Chinese government has consistently maintained that both its pursuit of zero COVID-19 and the rapid easing of restrictions were the right decisions.
But the researchers noted that “policies that initially boost public trust in the central government may ultimately cause an irreparable loss of trust in the supreme leader.”
