Pandemic, paternalism, and the (im)possibilities of citizenship in China

A netnography

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3759640
AutoresZhiying Ma (0000-0002-8210-7551, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice University of Chicago Chicago Illinois USA), Yaochu Bi (0000-0001-6444-3749, Harvard Graduate School of Design Harvard University Cambridge Massachusetts USA), Yuyun Bi (0000-0001-6309-409X, Harvard University), Naiyu Jiang (Department of Political Science Stanford University Stanford California USA), Na Jiang (0000-0003-4156-4737, Stanford University)
Año2025
Fecha de publicación2025-09-29
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/amet.70017
OpenAlexW4414597529
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas42

How did Chinese citizens imagine their political subjectivity under the zero-COVID regime? Our patchwork netnography of social media discussions (2020-22) analyzes how China's pandemic governance generalized and intensified "biopolitical paternalism"-a mode of rule that fused security, care, and economic rationality under the figure of a protective state. Our discursive, dynamic, and diachronic approach traces how people engaged in scalar inquiries about responsibility and community, alternately embracing, enforcing, and critiquing state power while internalizing and interrogating its neoliberal logic. As the implicit social contract-trading compliance for protection-began to fray, citizens envisioned a national community of shared suffering and challenged the regime's necropolitics. These struggles reveal how biopolitical paternalism shapes citizenship imaginaries in contested, uneven ways, with implications beyond China's pandemic moment

China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences