Abstract
ABSTRACT While most scholars agree that China’s central authorities are no longer the sole actors controlling socio-political life in the country, few have paid adequate attention to the proactive role of China’s grassroots actors, especially during critical public crises. During the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, Chinese society was fragmented in its response. Rural authorities imposed capricious and uneven restrictions, and civil disobedience among urban residents assumed myriad guises. The degree to which state directives on virus control were implemented within rural China depended on two factors: individual villages’ social structures, and how effectively political pressures were channeled from the top down. Furthermore, quarantined residents in urban areas should not be understood as passive victims, but rather as active subjects, whose diverse manifestations of civil disobedience during the crisis posed a challenge to the effectiveness of official restriction policies.
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