Three Cases of Non-compliance: Challenges of Trust and Governmental Response Strategies

Abstract

Abstract This study examines three noncompliant cases occurred in Wuhan, China during the outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020, including the Li Wenliang (李文亮) case, the Chen Qiushi (陈秋实) case, and the Huang Dengying (黄登英) case. These cases, albeit with different natures, broke out during the early stage of Wuhan ™s epidemic and posted threat and challenges to the Chinese authorities to different degrees. Based on open source information, this study focuses on the issues of trust and examines trust at three different levels (interpersonal trust, public trust, and political trust) among interactions by three groups of actors, including individuals involved in each case, the general public (e.g., how the public perceived and evaluated each case), and the authorities (e.g., how governments at the local and central levels perceived and handled each case). Two research questions are addressed: 1) How did trust at different levels play out in each case? 2) How did Chinese authorities respond to and handle threat and public trust challenges? Policy implications are drawn.