Studies show strong public support for China’s political system

Conventional narratives in the West claim that the government in China lacks popular legitimacy and only retains power through coercion. But existing evidence from the two main studies on this question – both conducted by established Western institutions – shows the opposite. These studies demonstrate that the government in China enjoys strong popular support, and that most people in China believe their political system is democratic, fair, and serves the interests of the people.

The first study is published by Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The Ash Center operates what they describe as “the longest-running independent effort to track Chinese citizen satisfaction with government performance”. Regular surveys have been conducted since 2003. The most recent results were published in 2020, in a report titled “Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time”.

This is not a pro-China publication. In fact, the Ash Center starts with the assumption that China is an authoritarian system dependent on coercion, and is therefore likely to face a crisis of public legitimacy. But the study’s actual results establish very different conclusions.

The authors summarize their results as follows. “We find that, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being.”

The report finds that public satisfaction with the central government is extremely high. In 2016, the final year of data, it stood at 93%, having generally increased over time. Satisfaction with lower levels of government is somewhat lower but still very strong; for instance, provincial governments enjoyed 82% support in the final year of data.

The second study is published by the Alliance of Democracies (AoD), a Danish NGO founded by the former Secretary General of NATO and the former Prime Minister of Denmark. AoD partners with Latana, a market research firm based in Germany, to conduct annual surveys on democracy perception in more than 50 countries around the world. They have published the Democracy Perception Index report every year since 2019. It is