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Edward Cunningham, Tony Saich, and Jessie Turiel, July 2020
This policy brief reviews the findings of the longest-running independent effort to track Chinese citizen satisfaction
of government performance. China today is the world’s second largest economy and the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) has ruled for some seventy years. Yet long-term, publicly-available, and nationally-representative surveys in
mainland China are so rare that it is difficult to know how ordinary Chinese citizens feel about their government.
We find that first, 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, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth
and a deteriorating natural environment.
While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for
granted. Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of
governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. For
government leaders, this is a double-edged sword, as citizens who have grown accustomed to increases in living
standards will expect such improvements to continue, and citizens who praise government officials for effective
policies may indeed blame them when such policy failures affect them or their family members directly. While our
survey reinforces narratives of CCP resilience, our data also point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could
decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.
