Chinese Citizens Research Articles

Institutional trust, scientific literacy, and information sources: What factors determine people's attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines of different origins in China?

This study aimed to investigate the different attitudes of Chinese residents toward COVID-19 vaccines produced in China and the United States in an emergency context, and then explored possible explanations for these different attitudes. Using data collected online in May 2021, we compared Chinese citizens' attitudes toward vaccines originating from China and the US and then adopted ordered logistic models to examine how trust in institutions, scientific literacy, and information sources influence their attitudes toward different vaccines. A total of 2038 respondents completed the survey. Participants reported very different levels of trust in Chinese and American vaccines. The main finding of this paper is that individuals who trust in Chinese institutions, especially those who trust in domestic scientists, typically feel encouraged to also place their trust in domestic vaccines and to distrust those from the US. These individuals' higher evaluation of Chinese government performance makes them more willing to vaccinate with domestic vaccines and less likely to seek US vaccines. Levels of scientific literacy, furthermore, seem to have little influence on attitudes toward different vaccines. Meanwhile, respondents who acquire health information from biomedical journals are more likely to hold a positive view of US vaccines, and these individuals contribute to bridging the gap between levels of trust in Chinese and US vaccines. In contrast with previous findings about Chinese attitudes toward imported vaccines, our respondents are more convinced of the safety and effectiveness of domestic vaccines than of US ones. This trust gap does not arise out of actual disparity in the quality and safety of the different vaccines per se. Instead, it is a cognition concern that is closely bound up with individuals' trust in domestic institutions. People's attitudes toward vaccines of different origins in an emergency context are more influenced by socio-political beliefs than by concern with objective information and knowledge.

The pragmatism of continual failure: environmental policy as experimentation in China

AbstractFaced with stifling levels of airborne pollution, Chinese citizens hold the state accountable, demanding solutions through effective environmental policy. To reduce emissions, the state has set up experimental pilot carbon markets, where potential failure is cast as integral to continuing improvement. Those in charge of conceptualizing and implementing these experiments, namely carbon bureaucrats, consultants, and developers, feel their public responsibility acutely, sharpened by personal anxieties about pollution and health. But they also often perceive these carbon markets as doomed to fail, in absolute terms, in delivering decarbonization goals. Those charged with realizing carbon markets are therefore caught between, on the one hand, policy failure being folded into continual, pragmatic experimentation and, on the other, their embodied knowledge that such progressive, positively freighted failure is in fact terminal.

Relationship between health literacy and COVID-19 knowledge: A cross-sectional study.

Health literacy (HL) is a protective factor for some chronic diseases. However, its role in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has not been clarified. This study aims to explore the association between HL and COVID-19 knowledge among residents in Ningbo. A total of 6,336 residents aged 15-69 years in Ningbo were selected by multi-stage stratified random sampling method. The "Health Literacy Questionnaire of Chinese Citizens (2020)" was used to evaluate the relationship between COVID-19 knowledge and HL. Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U test and logistic regression were used to analyze the data. The HL and COVID-19 knowledge levels of Ningbo residents were 24.8% and 15.7%, respectively. After adjusting for confounding factors, people with adequate HL were the more likely to have adequate COVID-19 knowledge compared with those with limited HL (OR = 3.473, 95% CI = 2.974-4.057, P <0.001). Compared with the limited HL group, the adequate HL group had a higher rate of COVID-19 knowledge, a more positive attitude, and a more active behavior. COVID-19 knowledge is significantly associated with HL. Improving HL may influence people's knowledge about COVID-19, thereby changing people's behaviors, and finally combating the pandemic.

Naturalized Athletes and Racialized National Identity in China

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on how the phenomenon of naturalized athletes has caused unprecedented domestic discussions on issues of national identity in China. Using online data collected from Sina Weibo, it discusses how the Chinese public reacted to prominent cases of naturalization of athletes in such different sports fields as men’s football and a variety of winter sports. It interrogates how Chinese citizens view the possibilities and realities of this particular category of immigrants, and how the appropriate boundaries of ‘Chineseness’ have been debated and contested. The paper found that Chinese public reaction to naturalization of foreign athletes is overall mixed, which is conditioned on an ethno-racial view of Chinese descent, cultural heritage and linguistic affinity. The paper concludes with reflections on the ethno-racial foundation of the Chinese national identity and the challenges the country will face in a future of accelerated international migration.

Reducing technology-mediated service exclusion by providing human assistant support for senior citizens: evidence from China

ABSTRACT This study explored how the allocation of human assistants in a technology-mediated service setting could reduce the exclusion of senior citizens from such services. Our methodology is based on social support and protection motivation theories. Using a two-phase study with a mixed-methods approach, we firstly conducted 25 semi-structured interviews to develop the research model. The model was then empirically validated using survey data from 285 Chinese senior citizens. The results revealed that senior citizens experienced defense motivation and avoidance behavior when facing technology-mediated services. However, perceived emotional support from a human assistant enhanced their evaluation of coping factors, further reducing their defense motivations and avoidance behaviors. Perceived instrumental support had a greater impact, as it both reduced their assessment of threat factors and enhanced their evaluation of coping factors. Finally, future time perspective moderated the effects of perceived support on threat and coping appraisal processing.

“Kill the chicken to scare the monkey”: Heavy penalties, excessive COVID‐19 control mechanisms, and legal consciousness in China

AbstractThis study analyses the legal consciousness of Chinese citizens during the COVID‐19 pandemic when the authoritarian state invoked heavy penalties to deter noncompliance with its excessive COVID‐19 restrictions. China used the approach of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey,” publicly punishing those who violated restrictions in order to deter noncompliance. This article explains why ordinary citizens supported this selective application of the law, as well as how the possibility of being the “chicken” contributed to their compliance (or noncompliance) with excessive COVID‐19 restrictions. It suggests that the uncertainty and unpredictability of law in the authoritarian state bred fear, which then led to compliance, regardless of the lack of procedural fairness. People's dissatisfaction with the rules, however, led them to tolerate and even support the noncompliance of people they trusted.

Are Chinese Citizens Satisfied with Lockdown Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak Period? A Survey from Wuhan, Shulan, and Nanjing

This paper evaluated whether the citizens are satisfied with outcomes and performance of lockdown initiatives in defending against COVID-19. We statistical analyzed participants’ characteristics and used a logit regression to analyze the factors associated with their experience and satisfaction with the lockdown initiative. According to our results, the issues of information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangements, and timely governmental responses significantly influenced the experiences of citizens during the lockdown period. The findings can guide policy makers regarding implementing more progressive initiatives to limit the spread of COVID-19 and facilitate the use of emergency measures for the sake of public health.

PENGAMBILAN KEBIJAKAN RASIONAL OLEH PEMERINTAH TINGKOK TERHADAP ETNIS UIGHUR DI XINJIANG 2014 - 2019

In 2014 an act of terror shocked Chinese citizen. After investigation, it was found that this crime was committed by few Uighurs’ descendants. This situation had made China strengthened its national security by implementing Strike Hard Against Extremist Terrorism and Reeducation Policies in Xinjiang which predominantly inhabited by Uighurs. At first both policies were directed to maintain Chinese national security, but the aim shifted when China launched One Belt One Road program and fortifying it control in Xinjiang in order to maximize economic beneficial. This research use literature review as data gathering technic complemented by Decision Making Theory and National Security Concept to explain the reason of Chinese Government policy toward the Uighurs. The act of terror in 2014 who committed by few Uighurs’ triggered President Xi Jinping to focusing in security sector in order to maintain national stability. Decision to enforce Strike Hard Against Extremist Terrorism and Reeducation Policies at first intended to maintain security and educate the people shifted as One Belt Road commenced. Chinese government sacrifices Uighurs in order to maximize national economic benefits.

Relationship between FDI inflow, CO2 emissions, renewable energy consumption, and population health quality in China

China has received significant foreign direct investment in the last few decades; the FDI inflow could affect the environment, income, and people’s health. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between FDI, renewable energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and Population health quality in China for the period 1980–2020. We applied the VECM method for the data analysis for the short and long-run effects of the independent variables. In the short run, FDI and CO2 emissions did not affect health quality in China; however, in the long run, FDI and CO2 emissions improved life expectancy. Renewable energy has both run and long implications for the health quality in China. These results reflect that FDI creates more jobs in China and improves the overall income of Chinese citizens, contributing to more accessible healthcare services in the long run. Therefore, the government should provide incentives to increase the FDI inflow, which uses renewable energy in production. Furthermore, to mitigate the CO2 emissions government should implement a carbon tax on the industries which has substantial CO2 emissions in the country.

Indonesia's Relations With China in the Age of COVID-19

Seven decades after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China, the COVID-19 pandemic presents new prospects and challenges for bilateral cooperation. We seek to analyse various traits in China–Indonesia relations since 2020 by examining how Indonesia attempts balancing between such cooperation and maintaining peaceful ethnic relations domestically. By tracking the domestic discourse surrounding COVID-19 and China through Indonesia's domestic news media, the paper analyses the development of the pandemic in Indonesia, its procurement of vaccines, and, most significantly, domestic sentiments concerning Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese Tionghoa citizens, as well as Indonesia's bilateral relations with China in general. The article argues that while the COVID-19 pandemic has created new avenues of cooperation between Indonesia and China, it has also adversely affected the domestic relations between ethnic Chinese citizens and the rest of the population. However, this has not translated into a widespread backlash toward China that might hinder bilateral cooperation.

Export of tourist services of Belarus to China

The article discusses the institutional foundations of mutually beneficial Belarusian-Chinese tourism cooperation. The research aims to explore the state, problems, and prospects for the development of the tourism industry in China and Belarus and to develop proposals for the development of tourism export services to China. The authors examine the structure of the tourism industry in Belarus and China, the inductive prerequisites for the development of the tourism sector of the two countries, as well as global trends in the field of tourism related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Special attention was paid to developing promising types of tourism in Belarus and China, such as "red," rural, folklore, digital, and “winter” tourism. The case of the Republic of Belarus, which may be helpful for Central and Eastern Europe countries, illustrates the possible directions for the growth of tourism export services to China, thanks to the optimisation of measures to prevent and control COVID-19. This optimisation contributed to the cross-border movement of Chinese citizens and opened up opportunities to attract Chinese tourists to the Belarusian market and the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. We have emphasised that for Belarus, achieving significant results in the development of the export of tourist services to China involves solving some essential tasks: conducting large-scale and ongoing advertising and informational campaigns to increase the awareness of foreign audiences about tourism products and recognition of the country as an attractive tourist destination; development and implementation of an incentive system for tour operators from China; performance of activities to adapt the service in hotels, airports, train stations, restaurants, museums to the individual characteristics and specific needs of tourists from China; improving the tax-free system to increase the interest of citizens from China in visiting Belarus.

Public Opinions on Stray Cats in China, Evidence from Social Media Data.

The management of stray cats is often contentious because public perceptions about these animals are different. Using user-generated content from Weibo, this study investigated Chinese citizens' opinions on stray cats on a large scale. Through the techniques of natural language processing, we obtained each Weibo post's topics and sentiment propensity. The results showed that: (1) there were some irresponsible feeding behaviors among citizens; (2) public perceptions of the ecological impacts caused by stray cats were unlike; (3) the trap-neuter-return (TNR) method served high support in public discussion; (4) knowledge about stray cats' ecological impacts was positively correlated with support for the lethal control methods in management. Based on these findings, we suggested that management policies should be dedicated to (1) communicating to the (potential) cat feeders about the negative aspects of irresponsible feeding behaviors; (2) raising "ecological awareness" campaigns for the public as well as highlighting the environmental impacts caused by stray cats; (3) understanding citizens' perceptions toward different management scenarios and making decisions accordingly. In addition, this study also suggested that social media data can provide useful information about people's opinions on wild animals and their management. Policies would benefit by taking this source of information into the decision-making process.

Gains and losses under economic reform: Understanding individual experience and the preference for state intervention in transition China

ABSTRACT Chinese citizens lived under a state socialist regime with heavy state intervention from 1957 to 1978, after which time China began its market oriented economic reforms. This paper investigates whether personal experiences, particularly economic and political experiences are related to Chinese citizens’ preference for state intervention during the transition period. Based on the World Value Survey data collected between 2017 and 2018, I found that Chinese people who have experienced negative economic shocks since market reform are more likely to support government redistribution as opposed to economic liberalization. Individual attitudes toward the role of the state are also associated with experiences of affiliation with the state sector, and an instrumental variable analysis shows that state sector affiliation has a causal effect on redistribution preference. The findings contribute to studies of redistribution preference formation in a country where market forces and Communist Party rule coexist, as well as revealing how the primary political goal shapes the redistribution preference of individuals under an authoritarian regime.

Invented Borders: The Tension Between Grassroots Patriotism and State-Led Patriotic Campaigns in China

ABSTRACT Patriotic campaigns and mass mobilization draw on existing xenophobic attitudes of the public, reinforcing the ‘us vs. them’ dualism between China and ‘the West’. However, patriotic campaigns are not always top-down, state-led, nor are they always primarily driven by political ideology. Patriotic content appeals to a growing nationalist audience who consumes a mixed feeling of perceived victimization at the hand of foreign aggression and the pride arising from being a Chinese citizen. This paper argues that the profitability of patriotic content circulating on social media exacerbated the tension between market-driven grassroots patriotism and state-led patriotic campaigns. The tension grows out of, and is manifested in, the online popular debate around economically driven, grassroots ‘patriotic’ content that can challenge the state state-led patriotic rhetoric. While the state sometimes strategically co-opts some patriotic contents into its own patriotic narratives, it also delegitimises other undesired ones through labels such as ‘high-level black’ (gaoji hei) or ‘low-level red’ (diji hong). These labels were initially used to differentiate meticulously crafted political satire and parody from incompetent, illogical and vulgar propaganda pieces that unintendedly blemish the state’s patriotic campaigns, but later evolved into an exercise of power to distance the CCP from undesired patriotic content.

What Factors Will Influence Chinese International Traveling for Leisure in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Role of Health Priorities and Health-Related Information Literacy.

China used to be the world's leading nation in terms of international (outward) tourism till the COVID-19 outbreak. However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, several new macro and micro-level factors might affect their international (outward) traveling behavior. The purpose of the current research was to examine the avoidance of international traveling for leisure in the Chinese population. The goal of the study was to highlight the importance of information self-efficacy and digital literacy as the key factors influencing tourists' traveling readiness. To achieve the goal, the study adapted the quantitative instruments from existing sources to map media exhaustion, information overload, and perceived health concerns, i.e., perceived effectiveness of health-protective measures, fear of new possible outbreaks, and pandemic crisis at source and destination. Chinese citizens' opinions were collected during the third quarter of the year 2022. Specifically, the quantitative survey from China collected a total number of 1308 respondents. This study used the statistical analysis software SPSS to analyze collected data. The findings conclude that the role of media is pivotal to shaping and predicting future trends in tourism preferences, perception of protective measures against COVID-19, and perceived seriousness of the pandemic crisis in the Chinese population. In addition, technology readiness (as hard self-efficacy) and health-related information literacy (soft self-efficacy) are critical to cope with the dark aspects of information exhaustion, overload, and pandemic seriousness in the post-truth era. The study is unique, as it examines the role of the seriousness of the pandemic at its source and destination and fear of new outbreaks simultaneously, underlining the potential future of immersive tourism (i.e., virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality-based tourism). This study has drawn interesting theoretical and practical implications for researchers, policymakers, and academicians.

Are Chinese B-shares dead? An analysis of price limits on AB-shares on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges

Firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges can simultaneously issue two types of shares: A and B-shares, subject to the same price limits. After July 2003, both Chinese citizens and Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFIIs) were able to trade both A and B-shares in China. Following this regulatory change, some media posts predict that B-share markets will cease to exist in the future. However, are B-shares really dead? Are there no differences at all between these two markets today? In this paper, we will try to answer this question by analysing these two markets with the perspective of price limit efficacy. The rationale behind price limits is to provide investors with a cooling-off period to counter noise trading and alleviate market panic. By applying a truncated-GARCH model that explicitly incorporates the truncation in the distribution of returns that is induced by price limits, we investigate whether price limits have the same effects on price behaviour and volatility on different types of share. In general, A and B-shares enjoy a quite similar pattern in regards to volatility spillover. However, B-shares tend to have more upper price reversal and lower price continuation. This suggests price limits work more efficiently in the B-share market.

“What's going on with my China?”: Political subjectivity, scalar inquiry, and the magical power of Li Wenliang

AbstractThis article examines how the death of Li Wenliang, in February 2020, served as an affordance for Chinese netizens to engage with their intimate sense of themselves as political subjects through the interrogative process of scalar inquiry. Li, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital who was sanctioned by Chinese authorities in 2019 for warning friends about the virus, was also an eminently normative and successful Han Chinese citizen who many saw as a reflection of themselves. His persecution, public humiliation, and death thus indexed the vulnerability of even the most compliant subjects and triggered an unprecedented public response that included both grief and outrage. Although largely censored within hours, this response continued to emerge throughout the year in a public mega‐thread on his Weibo “Wailing Wall.” This article draws on an alternative archive of censored messages on Li's Weibo page—usually described as an affective, apolitical space—to demonstrate how the Wailing Wall also becomes a unique sociomoral space in which people collaboratively reflect upon their sense of themselves as embodied subjects. Scalar inquiry, I suggest, thus emerges as a continual, collaborative, and simultaneously personal and political process of interrogating citizenship and nationhood vis‐à‐vis the remembered past, the experienced present, and the anticipated future.

Calculation of the Rate of Reaching the Standard of Beijing Citizens&amp;apos; Scientific Quality During the 14th Five Year Plan Period——Based on the L-Q GM(1,1)

As one of the four centers, Beijing is an important part of the national innovation system and an important driving force of social development. The scientific quality of Beijing citizens has become an important yardstick of contemporary society. By interpolating the discontinuous sample data of Beijing citizens' scientific quality compliance rate from 2015 to 2020 and using the grey system GM (1,1) model improved by the L-Q method to calculate, the Beijing citizens' scientific quality compliance rate from 2021 to 2025 is obtained. The results show that the Beijing citizens' scientific quality compliance rate is steadily rising, and will exceed 30% from 2024 and reach 35.26% by 2025, This is far beyond the target that the proportion of Chinese citizens with scientific quality should exceed 15% by 2025 and the long-term goal of 2035 in the outline of the action plan for the scientific quality of the whole people (2021-2035). At the same time, this paper gives suggestions to improve Beijing's science popularization work: measure the development trend of the compliance rate with the small sample method to guide the work, promote the coordinated development of new infrastructure and traditional infrastructure in the field of science popularization, strengthen the systematic promotion of science popularization, and pay attention to the accurate supply of science popularization services.

Being mobile in an era of lockdown: Chinese citizens in the U.S. negotiating homo sacer and the state of exception during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore what the travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic reveal about the changing geographies of mobilities and the making of homo sacer, the latter constituted through differentiated control of mobilities. Implemented to protect U.S. public health, travel restrictions imposed on travelers from Mainland China during the early days of the pandemic exemplify how sovereign power that declares a state of emergency and creates bare life can be readily applied to groups of people who previously had privileged access to global mobility. In this sense, bare life does not refer to fixed and disadvantaged social categories but is rather contingently and contextually constituted, through the works of hybrid sovereign regimes. At the same time, however, these travelers are not reduced to a state of zero-agency but reside within a liminal space between soft and hard cosmopolitanisms, as they can still deploy agency and cosmopolitan capital to achieve certain degrees of mobility. By examining how Chinese travelers navigated various travel restrictions and the constantly changing policies to travel to the U.S., this paper explores new spaces of exception and forms of bare life, and argues that homo sacer is dynamically, relationally and recursively constructed, both through apparatus of control and the agency of travelers.

The patriot-preneur – China’s strategic narrative of women entrepreneurs in Chinese media

ABSTRACT China declared women’s equality since the formation of the Communist Party of China in 1949. However a gender gap in entrepreneurship persists. Scholars have examined the modalities of women’s entrepreneurship, but the government’s framing of women’s entrepreneurship remains a mystery. Therefore, we analysed China’s strategic narrative of women entrepreneurs by asking, How does Chinese media portray women’s entrepreneurship? and Who is the ideal female entrepreneur? To answer these questions, we conducted an inductive qualitative analysis of Chinese media and selected speeches of Xi Jinping. Results revealed the patriot-preneur is the ideal female entrepreneur who engages in her Chinese Dream of entrepreneurship to promote her family, Chinese citizens, and the nation to economic greatness. This narrative is constructed from four discursive themes, fulfilment of destiny, persevere through hardship, gratitude to the Motherland, and collective feminist action. Using feminist theorizing, findings indicate filial piety and Marxism are essential to the patriot-preneur strategic narrative, whereby women must operate successful businesses while sustaining the ‘triple role’ of mother, daughter, and loyal citizen. By utilizing strategic narrative theory we introduced a novel process model to the field of entrepreneurship and public policy. The results underscore practical implications for Chinese policymakers and women entrepreneurs in general.