How Surveillance Justifies Mass Coercion: Insights from China's COVID Lockdowns

• In Event: Domestic Politics in Contemporary and Historical China

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that surveillance facilitates targeted coercion. However, we argue that surveillance also paves the way for mass coercion, legitimizing it by making uncertain threats appear certain to citizens. This dynamic is evident in China's COVID lockdowns. We collected data on daily counts of lockdown neighborhoods and COVID cases from 2020 to 2023. Using a triple-difference approach with World Value Surveys (China 2012, 2018) and a nationwide online survey in 2023, we show that the pervasiveness of COVID surveillance, as proxied by cellphone usage, significantly mitigates the negative effects of massive lockdowns on public perception of human rights respect and trust in the government. To establish causality, we conduct a survey experiment to show that digital surveillance indeed increases support for massive lockdowns by making citizens more likely to believe they are close contacts. Our findings suggest that uncertainty in threats to public safety may foster support for state surveillance and mass coercion.

Authors

• Xu Xu, Princeton University

• Xin Jin