COVID-19 and the Wuhan Diary –how does the overseas Chinese community react to group criticism?

Abstract

We conduct an online survey to explore how Chinese people living in Germany perceive and react to group criticism in the context of the debate on the Wuhan Diary, a chronicle about life during the lockdown in Wuhan. We find that the majority rating of the book is a lukewarm “neither like nor dislike.” Most participants are open to criticism in principle and do not agree that the book only spreads so-called “negative-energy”. However, many participants were skeptical about the objectivity of the book and concerned about its potential use by so-called anti-China forces, even though the degree of blind patriotism is relatively low in our sample. The factors influencing the book’s evaluation are intriguing: perceived Western sentiment, media exposure and uncritical patriotism all affect COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs, which in turn lead to a more negative evaluation of the book. A cluster analysis reveals two groups which differ in terms of properties like blind patriotism, belief in certain conspiracies, and also demographic parameters. Our results shed light on identity politics, motivated beliefs, and collective narcissism.