The CCP after the Zero-Covid Fail

China has two repressive systems that exist simultaneously: the highly coercive and surveilled system in Xinjiang, and the trust-based model of everyday repression prevalent throughout the rest of the country. The trust-based model has undergirded grassroots governance in China and facilitated the routine implementation of Zero-Covid. Drawing on a protest event dataset, I analyze the key characteristics of the covid protests erupted in November and December of 2022, before situating them in the larger context of China's political future under Xi Jinping's rule. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has responded to the protests with a combination of concession and repression. But neither the carrot nor the stick is able to fundamentally address the deep-rooted social problems or halt the tide of dissent. Coupled with structural economic challenges, these protests could be the harbinger of a new era of contentious state-society relations in China, the seeds of which were sown years ago–only precipitated and underscored by the CCP's covid debacle.

Strengthening the State through Crisis Management: Battles against the SARS and COVID-19 Pandemics in China

How do state leaders use crisis management to strengthen state infrastructural power? What explains the strategic choices of a state's selective institutionalization of crisis measures? Crises offer unique opportunities for state-building, yet the role of crisis management in consolidating state power is underexamined. This paper explores these important issues by examining how the Chinese government has deployed wartime-like measures in battling the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and COVID-19. While authorities in China have adopted unconventional measures in managing the crises, they have selectively normalized ad hoc practices and institutionalized certain measures to strengthen state infrastructural power once they have ended or been temporarily contained. Drawing on the frameworks of rational choice and historical institutionalism, our analysis suggests that the central government normalizes or institutionalizes measures that help to consolidate its control of the bureaucracy and enhance regime legitimacy.