Civil Society and COVID in China: Responses in an Authoritarian Society

Hu, Ming; Sidel, Mark

doi:10.1177/0899764020964596

Cited by 25 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…But these responses have been permitted under highly restrictive conditions, and those restrictions have not been ameliorated in this special time (Ministry of Civil Affairs 2020a, 2020b). At the same time, and we and others have shown, despite heavy restrictions, civil society still shows strength and vitality in emergency service, funding, volunteering, mutual aid, in-kind donations, and perhaps even, occasionally, policy advocacy (Cheng et al 2020;Dong and Lu 2020;Hu and Sidel 2020;Miao et al 2020;Yu 2020;Zhang and Guo 2020;Zhang, Shen, and Yu 2020).…”

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 92%

“…Some Chinese social organizations, national and local, have worked with state agencies, medical institutions, and foundations by delivering materials and services and assisting in epidemic prevention and control. Many individual Chinese have engaged in volunteer and mutual aid activities, but under restrictive policies in place that limit the autonomy of these activities and keep them subject to state controls (Hu and Sidel 2020).…”

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the period after Wenchuan in 2008 was a high water mark for autonomous activities by Chinese NGOs, the constraints on those activities and the broadening restrictions on advocacy and other work by Chinese nongovernmental groups have been accentuated in the Covid era. And yet, at the same time, Chinese nonprofits have responded with creativity and activism, at times, to the stronger constraints upon them in this era (Hu and Sidel 2020).…”

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Wuhan, Hubei Province, for example, the epicenter of the Chinese Covid outbreak, the national Ministry of Civil Affairs assigned five state-affiliated foundations to receive and distribute donations to Hubei. In other words, other Hubei groups were generally not allowed to receive donations directly in response to Covid (Hu and Sidel 2020).…”

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

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Party, State, Civil Society and Covid-19 in China

Sidel

2021

Nonprofit Policy Forum

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In China, the story of Covid-19 and the relationship between government and civil society is not a sharp break from the past. China has long guided and controlled the development of civil society organizations, and that has not changed in the Covid era. Instead, the Covid era is a story of a continuation in restrictive policy, and responses to Covid have utilized those existing policies and regulatory framework rather than developing new policies for the Covid era. The Chinese story may thus somewhat different from others in this special issue. China is certainly not a story of, in the words of our issue editors, when “pluralist and social democratic visions fade.” The Chinese Party-state’s permission for the reemergence of some kinds of civil society organizations in China since the early 1980s has never been marked by pluralist and social democratic visions. Instead, it has been marked by Party and state control, and clear choices on what kinds of organizations to facilitate and which kinds to repress. That control-based framework has accelerated since the current administration came into office in 2012. Covid has neither upset that restrictive framework nor substantially altered it. Instead, the framework of differentiation and constraint employed by the Chinese state has adapted, in some ways, to the need to control Covid and to control public mobilization on it and against the Party-state. In this brief article we outline the framework of differentiation and constraint that the Chinese Party-state uses to control the Chinese nonprofit sector, and mention a few ways in which that framework has been used in the Covid era.

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Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implementation and Policy In Covid Timementioning

confidence: 99%

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Party, State, Civil Society and Covid-19 in China

Sidel

2021

Nonprofit Policy Forum

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“…Representing the interests of private enterprises, these business associations get channeled into policymaking and sometimes even implement state policy on the government’s behalf (Yu et al, 2007). Therefore, Zhejiang offers an exemplary case for looking into the role of business associations during China’s collaborative response to COVID-19 through the lens of corporatism in corporatist China, although some research explains the other side of the story via a framework of civil society (Hu & Sidel, 2020).…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating COVID-19 Together: China’s Collaborative Response and the Role of Business Associations

Zhang

Shen

2020

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

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Drawing on data from Zhejiang Province, this study explores China’s collaborative response to COVID-19 in which business associations played a critical role. Consistent with existing literature on cross-sector collaboration and nonprofit contributions in extreme events, the preliminary findings of this study carry significant implications for future research to advance new knowledge. Specifically, two important next steps of future research that hold considerable promise—examining the overwhelming impact of the institutional environment on collaboration and accounting for the complex mechanisms in which multiple components of collaboration create outcomes through a configurational approach—emerged from this study. In addition, the practical implications of these findings are highlighted.

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Unpacking government social media messaging strategies during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China

Chandra

Fan

2021

Policy & Internet

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A core aspect of agile governance is effectively managing communications between a government and its citizens. However, doing so during an emergencyparticularly a pandemic-is often complex and challenging. In this article, we examine how various levels of the Chinese government (central, provincial, and municipal) communicated with the public in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing government social media posts during the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan ("text as data"), we conduct topic modeling analysis and identify four strategies that characterize Chinese governments' responses to a variety of issues at the ground level, which we label instructing information, adjusting information, advocacy, and bolstering. The results show that local government agencies predominantly used the first two strategies, whereas the central government mainly relied on the last two. These strategies explain how various levels of government engaged in agile governance through their communication with citizens, highlight the coordination and control work undertaken by governments at all levels, and demonstrate how these methods shielded the central government from blame for the pandemic.

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Civil Society and COVID in China: Responses in an Authoritarian Society

Cited by 25 publications

References 10 publications

Party, State, Civil Society and Covid-19 in China

Party, State, Civil Society and Covid-19 in China

Combating COVID-19 Together: China’s Collaborative Response and the Role of Business Associations

Unpacking government social media messaging strategies during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China

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