Domestic Contestation, International Backlash, and Authoritarian Resilience : How the Chinese Party-state Weathered the COVID-19 Crisis?

Arising out of a governance failure in Wuhan, the COVID-19 pandemic posed arguably the gravest threat to the party-state in decades. Yet within a few months, not only did Beijing manage to bring the overall situation under control, but it also earned back the support of the Chinese public. Putting the unfolding of the events in proper contexts, this chapter aims to provide a first-cut analysis of the causes of the initial outbreak as well as the subsequent political contestations in which the masses ended up rallying behind the party-state. While the Wuhan fiasco had everything to do with entrenched pathologies of the bureaucratic state, I argue that after Beijing took central command of the broader campaign its overriding priority was to contain the virus with a goal toward salvaging its legitimacy at home. To that end, Beijing unleashed its warrior diplomats to aggressively defend its handling of the pandemic, even to the detriment of its international image. Nevertheless, the strategy worked because the nationalist and populist backlash against the regime’s foreign and domestic critics helped turn public opinion around in its favor.