COVID-19, the Chinese communist party, and the search for legitimacy in the international arena

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 in the People’s Republic of China, a one-party state, posed a severe threat to the political legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This threat had its origins in the context of a growing rivalry between China and the United States, prompting the CCP to launch an offensive to win the battle for narratives about the nation’s role in the outbreak. Through both traditional and social media, Chinese diplomats carried out an aggressive campaign to demonstrate that China was the solution and not the cause of the pandemic. In addition, the CCP generated a discourse about the superiority of the Chinese political system in containing the pandemic, contrasting it with the response of liberal democracies. This article concludes that although the primary goal of the Chinese media campaign was to shape a favorable opinion of the CCP at home, the party was also concerned with bolstering its legitimacy abroad by courting international approval for its handling of the pandemic.