The Dissolution of the Pandemic State: Explaining the lack of post-pandemic grassroots state building in Chinese cities

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily endowed governments across the world with new powers and prerogatives as they enforced lockdowns, took control of supplies, and initiated new welfare payments. In China, which experienced one of the most extensive and restrictive quarantines, an emerging debate asks whether and how emergency powers have facilitated the rapid expansion of state control at the grassroots level, manifested in the growing administrative power of Resident Committees (RCs) (Zhu, Zhu, and Jin 2021; An and Zhang 2023). This article argues that, unlike in previous major disaster situations, RCs experienced no permanent change to their activities and capacities from managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, government power at the grassroots quickly reverted to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. Drawing on survey and interview data from seven urban communities across three cities in Hunan province, we reveal that this lack of continued fiscal allocation and the inability to attract more societal resources led to the quick dissolution of RCs’ emergency capacities. While emergency situations can create the impetus for the expansion of state institutions and administrative power, without continued resource allocation, the expansion of state power cannot be achieved.