By Harris Doshay, Lei Guang, Yanchuan Liu, and Young Yang
Over the weekend of November 26th, 2022, protests erupted in many of China’s cities followed by a swift crackdown. Provoked by the deaths of at least 10 Urumqi residents reported to have perished in a fire during a COVID lockdown, Chinese citizens have taken to the streets and university campuses across the country. Chants calling for everything from an end to COVID-Zero to Xi stepping down have been broadcast from the streets of Urumqi to Shanghai and global social media. Many western sources describe these protests as primarily anti-lockdown protests.
What is missing from the conversation, however, is reliable data on how many people have been directly affected by the COVID-Zero policy and how the Chinese public feels about these lockdowns and wider COVID policies. Does some silent majority support these policies? Do people who have experienced lockdown have growing levels of discontent? Does opposition to COVID-Zero correlate with broad anti-regime sentiment? Do people want an end to COVID controls, or an adjustment to their implementation? The China Data Lab decided to use our latest round of China from the Ground Up (CFGU) 1 surveys, carried out in October and November before the protests, to find out.
We first wanted to understand just how common direct experience with China’s COVID-Zero policy was. To do this, we asked survey respondents about what sort of quarantine lasting at least a week they had experienced.
Our data shows that residential quarantine was a relatively common experience, with 38% of our sample having experienced it, while only 7% had experienced centralized quarantine. Over half of all respondents had never experienced any kind of quarantine lasting at least a week.
However, COVID-Zero policies have had a wide impact, even among those who were never quarantined. Only 12% of respondents said it had not influenced them at all. 64% said it had some impact, 19% said a considerable impact, and 5% said it had a tremendous impact. Among those who experienced some form of quarantine, the impact was even higher.
Our respondents from Shanghai, which experienced famously poorly managed lockdowns last spring, present an interesting picture. This survey only had 77 respondents from Shanghai, and 25 reported never experiencing quarantine. 2 Due to the extensive lockdown of Shanghai residents, this leads us to question whether respondents were interpreting restrictions on movement and other forms of lockdown as distinct from quarantine. However, Shanghai residents were more likely to report feeling significantly impacted by COVID-Zero, with 35% reporting the policy had considerable or tremendous influence on their daily lives compared to 23% of the entire sample. 3
Given that a bit less than half of our respondents had personally been quarantined for more than a week and that most had said COVID policies had had at least some impact on their lives, how did they feel about adjusting or ending these policies?
Overall, respondents to our survey did not report a desire for a complete eradication of COVID-Zero policies. In general, people preferred modifications to the details of implementation. The avoidance of mass-casualties which might follow from ‘letting COVID rip’ may be a compelling argument. On the other hand, the excesses seen in poorly implemented lockdowns and deaths of individuals at quarantine facilities explain why people in China express a desire to see details of the policy changed. Our surveys provide no evidence of a silent majority in favor of COVID-Zero, and the deaths in Urumqi likely only inflamed already serious misgivings about the implementation of COVID controls.
There does appear to be a greater appetite for change among those who have personally experienced residential or centralized quarantine. While few of our respondents, about 7.4% of the sample, had experienced the latter, both groups affected by quarantine were less likely to say that the COVID-Zero policy should remain unchanged. Almost 80% of those who experienced quarantine at home expressed a desire to see COVID policies completely or slightly changed, while only 64% of those who did not experience quarantine had similar attitudes. 4 The majority of both groups expressed a desire for changes in the details, not a complete overhaul.
Beyond their support for COVID-Zero, respondents who were quarantined appear to trust both central and local governments less than those who never experienced quarantine. People who were quarantined in central locations were more distrustful of government than those who were quarantined at home, although for both groups average trust in government did not go far below seven out of ten.
Interestingly, these results hold both with regards to trusting the local government and the central government. This indicates that dissatisfaction stemming from quarantine policies may be causing individuals to become more dissatisfied with the government at all levels. This is a significant change, as reported Chinese trust in the central government has historically been quite resilient. This could explain why these protests included both calls for change to COVID policies and broader calls for political change.
Subgroups of the population also saw some variation in support. Government, party and SOE employees, for instance, were less likely to desire adjustment and more likely to desire sticking with the status quo. Still, even among this group, a plurality see a need for changes in the details of COVID-Zero.
Recent protests show a large youth contingent, especially among university students. Our survey data shows why this may be the case. Individuals in their teens and twenties were least likely to support upholding zero-COVID unchanged. Interestingly, respondents in their 30s were most likely to support upholding zero-COVID. Whether this is due to concern for aging parents and young children or another factor is unclear, but it nonetheless presents a different picture of youth versus elderly support than one might otherwise expect.
Shanghai residents were also, interestingly, more polarized than the general population when it came to perspectives on what to do going forward. They were both more likely to prefer tremendous change to the policy and more likely to support resolutely upholding COVID-Zero. They were less likely to call for adjustments in the details.
When looking at the political views of supporters and opponents of COVID-Zero, a clearer picture emerges. Those with low trust in government, who believe the government is not on the right track of reform, who would not prefer to live under the current political regime, who do not feel proud of said regime, and who feel the current regime is not capable of solving current problems, are all more likely to favor wide-ranging readjustment of COVID-Zero. Those with opposite views are more likely to support the status quo. Overall, those who are broadly in favor of the regime favor its COVID policy, and those who feel marginalized or are suspicious of the government are similarly suspicious of COVID-Zero.
It seems that while few want COVID-Zero repealed, many desire adjustments. As more and more people experience mismanaged quarantines firsthand, we’d expect such desires to only grow. China’s future direction is uncertain. Recent developments like inhaled vaccines may increase uptake in China and in turn lead to a way out of COVID-Zero isolation without the government’s feared wave of casualties. The leadership has released 20 new guidelines for managing COVID, but these guidelines have not yet translated into appreciable changes in local implementation. Whether the leadership feels it can continue to ease pandemic measures is unclear, as they may feel that capitulating to protest demands may create an image of weakness.
What is clear, however, is that a serious desire for some adjustment exists among a vast majority of our respondents. While attitudes may have changed since our survey was carried out, those who took to the streets seem to have reflected a deep desire for change in China’s COVID policies and their implementation.
Harris Doshay, Assistant Director of Research and Writing, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy
Lei Guang, So Family Executive Director, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy
Yanchuan Liu, Political Science Ph.D. Student, UC San Diego
Young Yang, Research Data Analyst, China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy
This blog is based on the result of the 15th wave of the China From the Ground Up project. See project page for project description and methodological notes: https://chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/china-from-the-ground-up/