The resilience of China’s political system is catching many in the West by surprise. Pundits presumed that China would fail because it eschewed liberal democracy and rule of law, making the system brittle and unstable. In trying to explain the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surprising resilience, some China-watchers argue that, contrary to western misconceptions, the system is highly responsive to the desires of the people, operating as a kind of “phantom democracy.” They argue the system produces a surprising degree of accountability and transparency, pointing to the government’s obsession with opinion polls and its experiments with democratic institutions at the local level.
One area where the government’s performance has been underwhelming, however, is in preventing public health and safety crises. This issue is highly sensitive for the leadership because it tests people’s fundamental faith in the system. From the infamous baby formula scandal that caused more than 300,000 infants to fall ill to the more recent vaccine scandal, several high-profile emergencies have unnerved Chinese parents. Some wonder: If the CCP can’t ensure basic safety for our kids, what use is the Party?
That these issues remain so stubbornly relevant points to a frightening possibility for China’s leaders: The system itself cannot keep people safe—but reforming it would be next to impossible in China’s current political-economic environment.
The government’s draconian response to these recent crises, then, should come as no surprise. Authorities have been quick to respond by dismissing and minimizing the problems, issuing false and misleading statements, and, in some cases, criminalizing the victims. This suggests China’s “responsive authoritarianism” model is less responsive—and resilient—than its proponents argue.
When it was discovered in March that a school canteen in Chengdu had been serving contaminated food, the government did not express anything resembling gratitude to the parents who exposed the problem. After pictures of the moldy food went viral on the internet, the local government was more interested in silencing the victims than responding to parental concerns.
Authorities first responded by arresting and pepper-spraying the protesting parents. Next, they outright denied that the canteen had any safety problems despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The head of the Wenjiang District Health Bureau, Yuan Xiaoling, said that lab tests of the food and examinations of sick children “showed no abnormal indicators”. The parents had no choice but to take the authorities by their word, which lacked credibility given the large number of children with serious medical conditions and the photographic evidence of contaminated food.
The government then accused the parents of having intentionally contaminated the food themselves. Chinese netizens were quick to find evidence that, in fact, the government had framed the parents for fabricating the incident, in an attempt to direct public anger away from the authorities. According to official reports, the authorities took samples of the food to the lab at three p.m. on March 12. A surveillance video was subsequently leaked, supposedly showing parents contaminating the food in the canteen. The video, however, was taken around ten p.m. the same day, after the samples had already been taken to the lab, at which point the parents would have had little motive to contaminate the food. The video was promptly broadcast on major news outlets, and police allegedly snatched three parents for further investigation.
Although the school principal was eventually dismissed over the scandal, the authorities sent a very clear message that they would not tolerate parents raising concerns about the safety of their children. Several days after the scandal broke, the local government released an official statement that when parents so openly express concerns for their children’s safety, they risk “crossing the boundaries of the law and the bottom line of morality.”
A far more serious crisis occurred in July 2018, when the public discovered that more than 247,000 injections of faulty vaccines had been administered to infants. This was the third major vaccine scandal in China since 2010. Their recurrence and severity suggest that administrative and legal problems are limiting the CCP’s efforts to maintain order.
And even when CCP officials do enforce some measure of accountability, it is often in an opaque, bureaucratic way. After the 2018 vaccine scandal, China’s head of government, Li Keqiang, announced that the biotech company responsible would be investigated and punished. But the government never disclosed the results of its investigation, assuming one was conducted at all. It simply announced that it had punished those responsible, and deleted social media accounts that continued probing. And because the CCP prohibits independent investigation, citizens must take the government at its word that justice is served. In a country where corruption and manufacturing fraud remain rampant, many citizens are reluctant to do so.
Another company found to be producing faulty vaccines, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, was given a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certification in 2018 under highly suspicious circumstances. In 2017, the website of the Food and Drug Administration Bureau revealed that the company produced a total of 400,530 faulty polio vaccines. On May 29, 2018, the local Food and Drug Administration announced that they confiscated the income generated from the faulty vaccines and fined the company, offering no further details. But according to an employee from the bureau, they have not been able to verify why the vaccines were faulty. Despite public suspicions and anger, the company rejected all interview requests, and refused to offer any information regarding its production process. The fact that it is a state-owned company (the majority shareholder being the SASAC, the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission) and that it was able to receive a GMP certification despite severe production irregularities made many Chinese netizens suspicious.
When the scandal broke, multiple Chinese cities issued statements saying that local hospitals and health centers had not purchased supplies from the Wuhan Institute, in an attempt to mollify parents. But after the Zibo government in Shandong province released such a statement, parents quickly posted photos of their kids’ vaccination records online, showing that the city had in fact purchased vaccines from the faulty batch.
Children are not the only ones affected by China’s chronically low health and safety standards. Jiangsu province experienced two deadly industrial explosions last month. The first and more deadly of the two occurred on March 21, killing at least 78 people. Rather than credibly demonstrating accountability and transparency, the government’s immediate response was to minimize the severity of the event, denying that the area had water safety issues resulting from the blast, a major concern for nearby residents. However, a government report directly contradicted this assertion, showing that local water sources had been severely polluted.
The government then announced that the incident had not significantly impacted air quality and that indexes all fell within the normal range. This appeared to be a fabrication, as local residents reported difficulty breathing and their eyes tearing up. The government also said there were no residents nearby. But Google Maps shows that there are three villages within a two-kilometer radius of the site and, according to Pengpai News, those three villages contain two kindergartens and three primary schools.
The official response to these scandals suggests the Chinese government today is far from transparent or accountable. Most importantly, each new scandal is a greater political threat than the last because it undermines the government’s previous assurances that it would rectify the problem and punish those responsible. It is little wonder then why the CCP feels compelled to silence and criminalize victims.
Most China-watchers take it for granted that the government’s legitimacy depends primarily on economic growth. But in some sense, public health and safety issues are a greater threat to the government’s legitimacy than economic stagnation, simply because physical safety is a more fundamental need than prosperity. While an uncertain economic future is certainly a political problem, China’s inadequate health and safety standards could eventually pose an existential threat to the CCP’s survival.
Pundits are likely right that the Chinese Communist Party’s resilience is due, in part, to its responsiveness. But as the recent health and safety scandals demonstrate, there are clear limits to the government’s response capabilities. In that case, what may keep the system going is not so much its responsiveness as its repressiveness.