Introduction

On 5th April, 2022 Shanghai, China’s economic center, launched a lockdown to combat against a new round of COVID-19 outbreak. In the context of global economic recovery, most countries have successively loosened the grip on the pandemic control, so the lockdown in Shanghai, which might be the strictest one in the COVID-19 era, had attracted the most attention since the first massive lockdown in Wuhan in early 2020. The experience of the Chinese government to impose lockdown has accumulated incrementally since 2020, and a set of relevant policy measures have been formed. How to satisfy the people as much as possible in cases of emergency has been one of the top issues for the government.

Since the end of 2019, the rapid spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 induced by COVID-19 has posed grievous threats to public health worldwide. To prevent sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks from deteriorating into runaway national ones, governments have initiated policy instruments, including setting up quarantine areas in hospitals, encouraging home quarantine, conducting more nucleic acid testing, and locking down high-risk areas. Among all the measures, the lockdown has been widely recognized as the most effective and efficient way to restrain personal mobility and prevent the disease from spreading. In general, follow-up lockdowns all took measures to reduce human contact, including suspending urban and interurban public transport, refraining residents from going outdoors if possible, stopping the business of non-essential business places, such as entertainment venues, dining places and factories which produce unnecessary materials, closed management of communities, and PCR tests across the whole city, with the purpose of pointing out patients and virus carriers as soon as possible and preventing the spread of COVID-19 on a wider scope. Although cities had subtle differences in the formulation of epidemic prevention and control policies, the foregoing measures were core ones that played a decisive role. This study aimed to analyze the associated issues that relate with the degree of satisfaction of citizens who involve in the lockdown in Wuhan, Shulan and Nanjing. Some interpretations of this policy believe that the lockdown is nothing but a simple and crude restriction on personal freedom of movements, and ignored the dynamic balance between policy-making and people’s satisfaction. Feedbacks of citizens, which can to the maximum extent diametrically reflect people’s attitude toward lockdown and its supporting policies, are the basis of necessary policy adjustments. Thus, it is of great significance to point out what have really influence citizens’ perception. This paper starts with a review that addresses the lockdown performance and the context of COVID-19 of the outbreak period in China. We outline the situation of Wuhan, Shulan and Nanjing during the lockdown periods and introduce the research questions. We employ the statistical analysis and logical regression to assess the degree of citizens’ experiences and satisfaction about the lockdown initiatives. Then the result and discussion are presented to explain why the issues of information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangements, and timely governmental responses have great influences to the experiences of citizens during the lockdown. And the conclusion is the final part of this research.

Documental Analysis and Research Questions Development

Novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in China in late 2019 and spread around the world in just a few months. This is not only the first extremely high-risk public health crisis to emerge since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but it also has become a common threat in multiple ways for the global population (Asmundson & Taylor, 2020; Hauguel-Moreau et al., 2021). To some extent, the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 is a product of the modernization of society, population movements, and globalization, which has had an unprecedented impact on public safety and public health worldwide (Chakraborty & Maity, 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO), on the 28th February 2020, raised the risk level of the epidemic to “extremely high,” and declared on the 11th, March 2020 that the epidemic had deteriorated to a “cosmopolitan pandemic” (WHO, 2020). In addition to the threat posed to people’s health, COVID-19 has also affected the public health management systems of countries all over the world. In the context of the pandemic, a government can effectively and expeditiously improve the situation by means of a sound and high-efficiency outbreak-prevention measure, while countries without a decent public health management system are inclined to be more vulnerable, and may even be beset with a social crisis (Chtourou et al., 2020).

On the 28th December 2019, a COVID-19 case was confirmed in a local hospital in Wuhan City, Hubei Province (Huang et al., 2020). To prevent the epidemic from spreading throughout the country, the Wuhan City government issued the Decree No.1, proclaiming that “channels to depart from Wuhan are temporarily closed,” and restrictions were escalated on the morning of the 23rd January 2020. On the same day, the Central Government of China immediately announced the lockdown initiative in Wuhan City and cancelled non-essential activities. They extended the Chinese New Year holidays and encouraged telecommuting and online education at home; these policies have effectively slowed the spread of the disease (Hu et al., 2020). In addition, each administrative region implemented the lockdown as a policy instrument as a result of its own risk assessment (Lau et al., 2020; Prem et al., 2020). The lockdown was one of the major decisions made by the Chinese government to cope with COVID-19 (Huang et al., 2020). After the 10th, February the Wuhan City government published 12 announcements in 2020, declaring a lockdown for all residential communities within the municipal district, and buildings with confirmed or borderline cases of COVID-19 were placed under strict quarantine (Pan et al., 2020a, b). On the 8th, April 2020, after 76 days of lockdown, Wuhan lifted its traffic restrictions regarding departure (CNBC, 2021).

Since then, temporary lockdown has been an effective policy instrument to deal with the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in a certain city at the initial stage. Allowing for disparities in urban size, economic activities and population scope, measures varied among cities. In general, follow-up lockdowns all took measures to reduce human contact, including suspending urban and interurban public transport, refraining residents from going outdoors if possible, stopping the business of non-essential business places, such as entertainment venues, dining places and factories which produce unnecessary materials, closed management of communities, and PCR tests across the whole city, with the purpose of pointing out patients and virus carriers as soon as possible and preventing the spread of COVID-19 on a wider scope. Although cities had subtle differences in the formulation of epidemic prevention and control policies, the foregoing measures were core ones that played a decisive role.

Analysis and Description of Statistical Data in Wuhan’s Lockdown

The effects of the lockdown initiative have mainly been analyzed using the numbers of newly confirmed cases, new deaths, newly discharged cases, and cumulative cases during the lockdown. Between the 23rd, January and the 8th, April 2020, the largest number of newly confirmed cases primarily occurred in February. From the February 2nd to 18th, the relevant departments recorded more than 1,000 confirmed cases every day (Zhang et al. 2020a). On the 13th, February alone, 13,436 COVID-19 cases were confirmed. However, the number of newly confirmed cases fell to less than 200 per day in early March, and to single digits after the 11th, March (Cao et al., 2020). On the 18th March, Wuhan recorded zero new COVID-19 cases. Moreover, the 26th, February, was a watershed, as the number of new deaths decreased dramatically after that point. The number of newly discharged cases increased sharply before the 4th, March, but declined from that day onward. The incremental decrease in the number of newly confirmed cases led to a downward trend of discharged cases, with a time lag. The cumulative number of confirmed cases rose swiftly before the 25th, February and remained stable after that (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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The COVID-19 Outbreak Trend From January 23 to April 7 (Yan et al., 2021)

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Effect of Lockdown Policy in Wuhan

Studies show that the lockdown had a positive effect on the containment of the virus. Most studies on the COVID-19 outbreak have been based around the SEIR model, which divides the entire population into the susceptible (S), the exposed (E), the infectious (I), and the recovered (R). Researchers may establish an SI model, SIR model, or SEIR model in line with research demand to examine the spread and route of transmission of the contagion using mathematical models. Lai et al. set up an SEIR model to simulate the epidemic’s spread in cities on the Chinese mainland, and the results show that early detection and quarantine were more effective in epidemic prevention and control than were travel restrictions and reduced contact with the potential infected person (Lai et al., 2020). Tian, Liu, and Li researched the virus’s transmission and its control using data from case reports, human activities, and public health interventions; they concluded that the lockdown in Wuhan delayed the spread of COVID-19 to other cities by 2.91 days (Tian et al., 2020). The research from the National Clinical Center for Respiratory Diseases in China integrated the data on the movement of the population before and after the 23rd January and the latest epidemiologic data on COVID-19 into the SEIR model. They showed that if the lockdown policy had been postponed for 5 days, the adverse impact of the epidemic within China would have been triple what it was (Yang et al., 2021). Cities with proper epidemic prevention and control measures reported lower weekly numbers of confirmed cases, on average, during the first week after the outbreak than those that took measures later. Additionally, suspending urban transportation, closing entertainment venues, and banning public gatherings all effectively reduced the infection rate (Riou and Althaus, 2020).

Wuhan’s Experiences

Wuhan, as a megalopolis with a population of more than 10 million, is the economic center and traffic hub of central China. With a daily population flow of hundreds of thousands, the decision to implement the lockdown produced great social waves and caused difficulties in social management. For both industrial production in Wuhan and the daily lives of residents there, the lockdown engendered tremendous adversities (Hong et al., 2021). However, with the policy achieving its primary results and the need for prevention and control measures of pandemic becoming more dangerous across the world, the lockdown has gradually been endorsed and even emulated by other countries. In addition, the Chinese government has creatively developed Fangcang shelter hospitals to provide medical care, disease monitoring, food, and social activities by converting public spaces, such as stadiums and exhibition centers, into health facilities, giving Wuhan significant additional medical resources (Chen et al., 2020).

Many other important factors have been considered during the lockdown in Wuhan to improve policy responses to control the epidemic and to maintain the normal functioning of the city. An adequate food supply was the first condition for maintaining the lockdown. Undoubtedly, strict epidemic prevention and control measures in Wuhan have had a negative impact on local food supply chains (Min et al., 2020). However, the Chinese government has made every effort to ensure the basic food supply for people in Wuhan. Despite home confinement, most residents obtained enough food by shopping in person or by ordering food online, which allowed them to maintain their pre-lockdown eating habits (Yang et al., 2021). In addition, communities also played a key role in preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus. Community services could effectively meet the needs of epidemic prevention and integrated services. The government was able to maintain the quality of residents’ lives and the degree of coordination needed to control the epidemic by ensuring an adequate number of service personnel, mobilizing the service resources, and adjusting incentive policies (Zhang et al., 2020a, b). The application of a five-in-one community management mode plus a regional WeChat platform also had positive effects in Wuhan (Pan et al., 2020a, b). Furthermore, the lockdown may have been emotionally traumatic for the people of Wuhan, but timely official health information and peer support on social media eased the public’s stress (Zhong et al., 2020). In the end, Wuhan managed to survive the lockdown without increasing the risks to people’s mental health, which shows the general population’s tremendous resilience (Zhou et al., 2020). In subsequent lockdowns, Wuhan’s experiences have been repeated and improved.

In May 2020, COVID-19 emerged again in Shulan County, which is located in Jilin Province with a total population of 670,000. The pandemic had spread to Liaoning Province, with more than 8,000 people diagnosed with the virus; the county was immediately locked down until June 2020 (Tang et al., 2020). The epidemic lasted 26 days in Shulan. As of 11th May 2020, a total of 127 confirmed cases have been reported in Shulan, and 276 cases have been isolated. The outbreak has been largely brought under control since the lockdown began. Shulan county is also a comprehensive urban exclusion zone, with all residents isolated in their homes except those who keep the city running and medical staff.

Likewise, Nanjing entered lockdown after the COVID-19 virus was detected on an aircraft that arrived from Russia in late July 2021 (Xu et al., 2021). On July 20th, 2021, the staff of Nanjing Lukou Airport found the nucleic acid test positive, thus discovering the imported epidemic situation. On July 21st, Nanjing began to block Lukou Airport and its surrounding areas. On July 22nd, the number of the closed community increased to 34, covering Jiangning and Lishui districts in Nanjing. This outbreak in Nanjing has attracted a lot of attention because it was discovered late and spread widely all over China. As of 29th July, the epidemic situation in Nanjing had spread to over ten cities in seven provinces. Nanjing was finally unsealed on 15th August, which lasted for 26 days. This lockdown in Nanjing is mainly the closure of epidemic-related communities. As of July 22, 34 districts had been notified of the closure, and there has been no new news since then. In the streets near Lukou Airport alone, 165,000 people were locked down. According to the data from Nanjing Municipal Health Commission, the total number of confirmed cases reached 235 (Tang et al., 2020).

The outbreaks of COVID-19 in Shulan and Nanjing were very different from that in Wuhan, which caused large-scale infection and widespread deaths. The two later outbreaks were less severe than the first due to the improvement in public health awareness among citizens and the quick response by the government in initiating the lockdowns. At the same time, the three cities have differences in geographical location, population and transportation mode, which also determines the differences in their city closure methods. We show these differences in Table 1.

Table 1 Differences of major characteristics among three cities (Yan et al,. 2021)
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One of the major challenges faced in lockdown policy in China is determining whether the government is making the correct decision in initiating a lockdown. Additionally, it must be considered whether the lockdown is supported by public opinion both inside and outside the quarantined area. An evaluation of the outcomes of lockdowns and citizens’ reactions, including whether or not they were happy with the performance of this initiative, are crucial to the policymakers, government, and professionals who are involved in epidemic prevention in China.

This research empirically and prescriptively contributes to contemporary studies of anti-epidemic measures and lockdowns as a policy instrument in China. Quantitative analysis is primarily used in this research, and it is based on the results of surveys of people who experienced the quarantine and lockdown in the cities of Wuhan, Shulan, and Nanjing. Few studies from this perspective have been published, both in China and the rest of world, as most research has focused on assessing COVID-19 and how it directly influences global economic losses. This highlights the absence of investigations assessing the performance and outcomes of policy instruments that control and prevent the spread of COVID-19. The primary aim of this paper is to observe public opinion on the lockdown initiative in China. The secondary aim is to explore which aspects of lockdowns as a policy instrument utilized by the Chinese government satisfied Chinese citizens. The final contribution lies in understanding lockdowns in China, which can hopefully guide not only the Chinese government, but also international policymakers to produce more progressive anti-epidemic outcomes.

The authors examined two research questions:

  • RQ1. Were the people who were living in the quarantine areas satisfied with the lockdown initiative during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak?

  • RQ2. Which aspects of lockdown as a policy instrument are strongly associated with the experiences of people who were quarantined during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak?

Materials and Methods

Sampling

Data in this research were derived from a questionnaire survey jointly conducted by Jilin University and municipal people’s governments of Wuhan City, Nanjing City, Shulan County as well as their subordinate sectors. Thanks to the proper control over the pandemic in a mass, lockdown was carried out only a handful of time in the Chinese mainland in the first half of 2021. One reason we chose the three cities/county is that there are distinct disparities in respect of socio-economic conditions among them. Both Nanjing and Wuhan are provincial capital in economically developed provinces and major cities with a population in the vicinity of 10 million (9.31 million and 11.21 million by the end of 2019, respectively). Locating on the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain, the two cities are throats of water and land communication in central and east China. Shulan, by comparison, is a small county in China’s rust belt and borderland with merely 656,000 permanent residents. Thus we believe that the discrepancies among the three lockdowns in terms of time, place, urban size, government efficiency, population characteristics and degree of closure can ensure the universality of this research.

The specific sampling procedures were as follows. Firstly, we designed a questionnaire on people’s assessment of the lockdown performance of their local governments. The questionnaire was conducted using a 5-point Likert scale. In additions to questions on basic information about respondents themselves such as gender, age, monthly income and education level, we also investigate how people rated the government work through five major indexes, including public safety education, information disclosure, accountability of government, resource allocation and government response. Second, the questionnaires were handed out through the internet indiscriminately to ordinary citizens who underwent the lockdown, rather than civil servants or medical staff directly involved in epidemic prevention, from the three cities (1000 for each), and a total of 2,627 out of the 3,000 respondents successfully finished the survey and their analysis are shown in the Table 2. A validation program was employed to verify that all questionnaires were filled out by real people instead of robots. Rich information was gleaned during the survey, and no personally identifiable information was collected.

Table 2 Definitions and descriptions of variables included in the survey (n = 2627)
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Measurements

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable of this study was people’s general attitude towards the lockdown performance of their local governments. Respondents were asked to answer 13 questions, including 4 questions about basic information on themselves and another 5 that involve factors directly influencing people’s satisfaction of the lockdown performance.

Independent Variables

A total of 9 variables were taken into account in the Logit Regression. Gender, age, monthly income and education level are related to respondents’ personal basic information. We recorded gender as a binary variable (Male = 1, Female = 2), age (1 = Under 20, 2 = 20–29, 3 = 30–39, 4 = 40–49, 5 = 50–59, 6 = 60 +) and monthly income (1 = 0–1,999, 2 = 2,000–3,999, 3 = 4,000–5,999, 4 = 6,000–7,999, 5 = 8,000–10,000, 6 = 10,000 +) were measured on 6-point Likert-type scale, and education level divided into five levels (1 = Middle school, 2 = High school, 3 = College, 4 = Bachelor’s degree, 5 = Master’s degree or higher).

Another 5 variables placed emphasis on overall evaluation on government works. We considered these variables to straightway influence people’s assessment on the lockdown performance and the interaction between the people and the government. Respondents were asked “to what degree do you think that public safety education/information disclosure/accountability of government/resource allocation/government response influenced the efficiency of the lockdown policy in your city during the pandemic outbreak period”, and all the responses were assessed on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = None or little, 2 = Not too much, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Partially, 5 = Very much).

Data Analysis

We used descriptive statistics to study the sample. Citizens’ basic attitude to lockdown was set as the dependent variable, and perceptions based on sex, age, education background, professions, monthly income, degree of cognition in public safety education, information disclosure, accountability, reasonable resource allocation and timely governmental responses were individually recognized as independent variables. The relationships between the experiences of lockdown and sex, age, education background, professions, monthly income, degree of cognition in public safety education, information disclosure, accountability, reasonable resource allocation and timely governmental responses were analyzed using an ordered logit regression because the dependent variables were categorized and ordered. All the statistical analyses were two-sided and performed using SPSS (17.0 Version SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and STATA (14 MAC Version Stata Corp, College Station, TX, USA), and the statistical significance was set to p < 0.05.

Results

Sample Characteristics

The results of the analysis reveal differences in the distribution of the intensity of experiences and satisfaction with the lockdown. Lockdown experience was coded as follows: 1 = Completely negative (0–20), 2 = Partly negative (21–40), 3 = Neutral (41–60), 4 = Partly positive (61–80), and 5 = Completely positive (81–100). Of the 2,627 effective survey responses, 96 people (3.7%) selected 0–20; 301 (11.5%) chose 21–40; 629 (23.9%) chose 41–60; 974 (37.1%) chose 61–80; and 627 (23.8%) chose 81–100. In exploring the degree of satisfaction with the lockdown initiative in Wuhan City, Shulan County, and Nanjing City, we found that 60.9% of the effective responses were positive, which is more than the percentage that held negative views (15.2%) plus the neutral attitudes (23.9%).

Quantitative Analysis

Table 3 provides the results of the ordered logistic regression, including the coefficients, standard deviations, p-values, and confidence intervals. The table provides basic information on the regression results. First, we obtained the model fit information, and the results show that the p-value is less than 0.001, indicating the overall significance of the model. Second, a test of parallel lines was conducted, and the p-value was 0.054, which is greater than 0.05, thereby satisfying the test of parallel lines. This indicates that the parametric estimated value of the ordered logistic regression model was reliable and reflects the influence of the independent variables on the dependent variable.

Table 3 Coefficient of ordinal logit regression (n = 2627)
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Second, as shown in Table 3, there is a significant relationship between the dependent variable capturing satisfaction with the lockdown initiative, and three independent variables: information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangement, and timely governmental response. The respondents in this survey affirmed that the efficiency of information disclosure made the lockdown effective, and they believed that the reasonable resource arrangement and timely governmental responses provided comfort and addressed the frustrations of citizens while preventing the spread of the epidemic. Moreover, the estimated coefficients of sex, age, education, profession, monthly income, degree of cognition in public safety education, and accountability were not statistically significant in this model (p > 0.05).

An interesting finding about the results of the quantitative analysis manifests itself. Roughly speaking, all independent variables can be classified into two categories: information disclosure, resource arrangement, governmental response and accountability of government are public factors controlled by governments, while the rest, including age, sex, education level, profession, monthly income and degree of cognition in public safety education, are all private factors closely related to residents themselves. Three out of the four public factors, except for accountability of government, can exert direct impact on the daily life of people, thus influence people’s confidence in and evaluation on the performance of communities and governments. During the period of lockdown, better government work can preferably serve the people in quarantine and to the greatest extent squash the negative effect induced by lockdown, and then effectively curb the spread of COVID-19 by minimizing unnecessary physical interaction. Although also important in assessing lockdown performance, people are less sensitive to accountability of government because it is largely a measure on the official level. We also point out tenable reasons to explain the statistical non-significance of private factors. On the one hand, lockdown, as a policy initiative carried out by the government, has a relatively powerful authority among the people, so guidance from official agencies is considerably important during hard times; on the other hand, residents, as individuals are incompetent to cope with outbreaks of COVID-19 all by themselves, have to rely on the government to tide over the lockdown, so residents’ individual wills tend to be less important.

Discussion

Considering the actual situation in China, the lockdown policy has helped China survived the most difficult two years. In the end of 2022, the Chinese government, under the pressure of economic recovery, finally rescinded the lockdown policy temporarily. Even so, the achievements and positive significance the lockdown policy cannot be easily ignored. Repeated outbreaks of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases in the future will continuously text the executive capacity of governments. No one can say for sure that the lockdown policy will be put on the shelf permanently. Government work during the lockdown period, in this case, will inevitably cause disturbance to people’s daily life, so relative researches on what may influence people’s satisfaction will still of great significance. Therefore, this study of the lockdown provides a reference for further pandemic prevention and control measures, and sheds light on possible public experiences dealing with outbreaks of similar infectious diseases in the future. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate whether the citizens were satisfied the lockdown or not by analyzing influencing factors of lockdowns’ implementation. This paper explores public feedback on the lockdowns in Wuhan, Shulan, and Nanjing, so as to assess people’s level of satisfaction on lockdown.

Foregoing analysis showed that compared with other aspects, information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangements and timely governmental responses are three influencing factors that mattered most. Over the past two years, in fact, China’s implementation of the lockdown policy was almost consistent with the performance in these three aspects: people have been basically satisfied with lockdown when the government could do a good job in information disclosure, reasonable resource allocation and timely governmental response, and the policy was finally brought to a halt when the Chinese government cannot satisfy the people.

The implementation of the lockdowns demonstrated the high efficiency of the Chinese administration. It is of great importance to warn the public as well as other emergency response departments about the dangers of the virus, and to coordinate relevant departments in carrying out emergency protocols after identifying the category, degree, and causes of major disease outbreaks. It is also the duty of the government to prevent, control, and defuse risks and avoid the outbreak of such diseases in accordance with their authority and established legal procedures.

Moreover, it is crucial to build a sound rapid response mechanism for major outbreaks. China’s current emergency response mechanism is mainly constructed on the basis of the Emergency Handling Law of the PRC and the Overall Plan on National Public Emergencies (Zhang et al., 2020a). In the process of comprehensively promoting the construction of an emergency response mechanism to combat epidemics, the Chinese government must take into account the experience and deficiencies of epidemic prevention and control at home and overseas, improve the emergency mechanisms, and design these mechanisms to enhance personnel allocation, financial support, supply distribution, and information construction. When the government of Hubei Province decided to cordon off Wuhan at 10 am. On 23rd, January, it took only 10 h to complete the process. Faced with the outbreak, the Chinese government responded quickly and tried its best to curb the spread of the virus. According to the COVID-19 Regional Safety Assessment released by Deep Knowledge from the United Kingdom in June 2021, China ranked 12th in government efficiency and first in emergency preparedness (WHO, 2021).

In the process of epidemic prevention and control, China has focused on providing innovative approaches to information disclosure: in addition to traditional media, such as print media, TV, and radio, network media, including Sina Weibo on government affairs and WeChat official accounts, have also been widely employed (Dixit & Nandakumar, 2021). The government has made public the number of confirmed cases transparently and in real time via the Internet, and news agencies have reported on the epidemic situation to inform the public of recent changes in confirmed cases, remind people to stay away from high-risk areas, and to sterilize key areas in due course. Relevant departments have conducted big-data analyses with the aid of health codes and travel history codes. People who have been in contact with COVID-positive individuals are accurately tracked, and nucleic acid tests are carried out to prevent the spread of the virus. For citizens for fear of getting infected, information disclosure has never been criticized for “causing social panic”, though sometimes people could be frightened by rises in numbers of confirmed cases. That indicates people, in or out of epidemic areas, have been rather satisfactory with China’s current highly transparent information disclosure system.

The Chinese government was the first to put forward these policies and formed them a complete framework. The approaches received widespread criticism for allegedly “violating human rights” in the early days; however, with the epidemic spinning out of control in some countries, governments had to take responsibility. The large-scale quarantine in Wuhan, which enclosed over ten million people in the lockdown, has caused huge social and economic losses and left other governments around the world worried about the consequences (AlTakarli, 2020). Eventually, lockdowns were used provisionally in some cities and emergency areas around the world to reduce population movements, just as the Chinese government did. However, the results varied. Studies show that the key to stopping the spread of COVID-19 is the size of the population infected at the time of the lockdown, and delays in putting in place isolation measures can lead to a surge in infections (Wang et al., 2020). By limiting the spread of the virus, lockdowns in China have been an effective auxiliary policy instrument to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from creating a larger outbreak, but some other countries have failed to achieve this success. This emphasizes that differences in the execution of lockdowns have partially contributed to the distinct situations in China and some other countries. China at present focuses on cases imported from overseas, and few indigenous cases have been recorded over the past several months, while some other countries have already witnessed millions of confirmed cases. In light of discrepancies in national conditions and political systems, governments of other countries cannot simply “copy China’s homework” and emulate their measures. Still, the success of the Chinese government may enlighten the public officials in other countries when it comes to another round of outbreaks.

In this study, we analyzed main factors that can affect citizens’ satisfaction with the lockdown policy, and deemed them as the bridge that connecting the popular will and policy-making. Considering it is difficult for citizens to collect all necessary information, there will finally be an information asymmetry between citizens and the government, leading to people’s one-sided opinions on the lockdown. As a result, a study would be not very likely to draw accurate conclusion if it merely raises the problem “are you satisfied with it”. Satisfaction, or to what extent can the government fulfil citizens’ needs, is a rather abstract conception, but there still shall be objective standards to measure it. We must at first make it clear that lockdown is not an independent and isolated policy, but in fact an aggregation of a series of supporting policies, and changes in anyone of them mattered. Under such circumstances, we believe it is an effective method to measure people’s satisfaction through analyzing citizens’ attitudes towards the implementation of specific policies, such as information disclosure and allocation of materials. In this way, this paper quantified citizens’ satisfaction on the lockdown as well as the government performance, and clearly selected the most significant ones from all influencing factors that may shape citizens’ opinions.

Through the study of these three cities, this paper demonstrates that implementing a lockdown while providing public information, efficiently distributing materials, and achieving rapid responses by the government is still one of the most effective measures, at least at the current stage during which the medical system alone cannot completely cope with COVID-19. Compared with other anti-epidemic measures, lockdown, guided uniformly by the Chinese government, is nearly non-discriminatory for residents from different social classes, as the paper suggests. Compared with Wuhan and Nanjing, two highly developed megacities, Shulan is a county that is struggling economically; it has fewer medical resources and receives less government attention, but the government did not ignore the appeals of residents there during the lockdown. The Chinese government and relevant institutions have learned how to consider the interests of all parties in the past two years to maintain the normal social order and public security when a lockdown has to be imposed. In fact, China’s basic opinion of treating everyone in epidemic areas equally without discrimination has served as a foundation to accumulate people’s satisfaction. During the courses of lockdowns in the three cities, neither governments nor the society has deliberately formed a privileged class which could enjoy better public services or more supplies. A series of specific policy measures could endorse the point, such as the handing out of goods as equable as possible, free medical treatment covering all confirmed cases, and an indiscriminate information announcement system.

The lockdown initiative, as an emergency response to potential virus outbreaks, has been used by some other countries to varying degrees. This research does not comment on the lockdown performance outside the Chinese mainland, but must emphatically point out two key factors that may cause disparities in lockdown performance between China and some western countries. First, the gap between executive capacity of governments of China and other countries contribute to differences in government response, resource allocation and information disclosure. More than a crisis in public health and the medical system, the global outbreak of COVID-19 is a major test of governments’ abilities to coordinate all aspects of social activities. State-run sectors, including those in public health, manufacturing, and transportation, have served as auxiliary means to support the regional lockdowns. The decision to implement a lockdown is always determined by the central government, while governments at the provincial and municipal (county) levels are responsible for the details of the lockdown’s execution, such as material distribution and personnel assignment. Profiting from the quick response of the government and an efficient mechanism of resource allocation, it took China only 10 days to build two well-equipped fangcang shelter hospital in Wuhan at the beginning of 2020, and subsequent lockdowns were all carried out like clockwork without causing social panic or massive shortage of necessities. An effective information disclosure system to publish the latest information about the pandemic. By virtue of QR Codes at WeChat and other platforms, governments can clearly trace the movements of confirmed cases and pinpoint the source of infection. In short, the lockdown performance can be obviously enhanced when the government can provide good service. Second, residents’ attitudes towards the government also matters to the lockdown performance. Caught unprepared, individual citizens are not equipped with necessary material reserves or capacity to deal with public health crisis such as the COVID-19 all by themselves, and they have to assign part of their rights to the government and depend on the public services it offers. Lockdown can of course bring some inconvenience, and people just cannot leap at it without trust in the government. This study can presume that the unity of the will of the state and the interests of the people determines whether or not a lockdown is an appropriate policy and when it is necessary. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2022, trust among Chinese citizens in their government reached a record 91%, the highest ever seen globally in a decade (comparable values were 53% for France, 47% for Germany, 42% for the UK, 39% for the US, and 36% for Japan, by comparison) (Sanchez-Caballero and Selles, 2020). We believe that government response, information disclosure and resource allocation are just in accordance with China’s long-lived collectivism, thus promoting the lockdown performance of the government. When a policy instrument can principally be consistent with longstanding values of the people and social traditions, citizens tend to be more tolerant to the policy formulation and implementation. That could be a reason why the Chinese people have been more inclined to satisfy with lockdowns.

Combined with previous studies, this research tries to identify factors influencing lockdown performance and explain why actual results of lockdown in different areas and countries may vary. First, information disclosure in China’s lockdown initiative requires public announcements of not only information on real-time epidemic situation but whereabouts of confirmed cases and close contacts, while the absolute protection on the personal privacy in western countries in fact to a large extent deters the trace on routes of infection. Second, China’s emergency-response resource allocation mechanism is basically run by the government, so the Chinese society can afford to ensure the efficiency of the system by sacrificing some economic interests. Third, government response in China is within the tolerable allowance of the people. Public security organs in China have seldom recorded extreme events about breaking lockdown since 2020, but it is hardly news that people of some other countries defy lockdown. For instance, the government of the Netherlands could hardly impose a lockdown due to the vehement protests of most citizens against the policy. On the 2nd, January of 2022, a clash erupted between angry residents and the government, and the police had to release dogs to disperse the protestors, causing multiple injuries (WHO, 2020). The contrast between the lockdown performances of China and other countries roots in one major discrepancy, namely people’s level of satisfaction. Flaws might in China’s lockdown, citizens in epidemic areas were basically satisfactory towards services provided by governments, while people in some countries believed that their public organs should have done better. This study holds the idea that some concessions shall be made by the people to the government, in return for larger capacity of the government to answer crisis.

In all fairness, lockdown is not a panacea to deal with all potential outbreaks in all countries, and the lockdowns carried out by the Chinese government are far from perfect. However, the decision is indeed a sound measure that prevents several confirmed cases from multiplying into mass infection. Over the past two years, lockdowns as an epidemic prevention and control policy have been criticized for being not only too harsh but also too expensive economically. Governments of several countries believe that newly confirmed cases caused by the Omicron variant (SARS-CoV-2 Omicron) are mostly mild, and patients may recover very soon without medical attention; therefore, a lockdown has no longer been seen as an appropriate policy. The White House announced on the 20th, January of 2022, that the epidemic era would end on the 27th March, and most epidemic prevention and control policies, lockdowns included, would be completely revoked. The UK government also declared that no more deaths would be counted from the 2nd February. However, recent research has proved that COVID-19 and its variants may cause irreversible and permanent damage to some people, even patients with only mild symptoms (Iwasaki et al., 2022; Bellucci et al., 2021). Unfortunately, there has been no sign that COVID-19 will “magically disappear.”

Taking into account the differences between lockdown performances of China and some other countries, this paper believes that citizens from Nanjing, Wuhan and Shulan, and the whole Chinese people, have been basically satisfied with governments’ lockdown performance, allowing for China’s high efficiency of the response to the pandemic control and the overall stability of the Chinese society. Lockdown, as a policy instrument, was designed to meet the common interests of the most people. In the face of major emergencies such as the outbreak of COVID-19, people’s welfare is doomed to be undermined, and lockdown on such circumstances is given the mission to ensure the social order and the lower limit of people’s daily life. People’s frustration on some aspects is inevitable, and a competent government shall do something to meet people’s need. Through this study, we believe that the government of course has the ability to satisfy the people undergoing lockdown, but the outcome depends on government’s will and people’s approval, just as above mentioned.

Research Limitations and Prospects

This study has several limitations. First, the research is based on a quantitative method. The data were gathered through surveys from three locations: Wuhan City, Shulan County, and Nanjing City. We chose the locations due to their significance, but instances of lockdowns have frequently occurred from 2020 until now. Even though Dalian City was locked down twice in 2020, it was not an area of focus in this research. The results of the survey thus may not reflect some important feedback. Further studies should quantify more issues, such as occupation, local medical resource and voluntary service, in order to make the research more precise. Second, Wuhan is a big city located in the central part of China, while Shulan is a small county in China’s northeast, and Nanjing is a historical city in the east. Some differences exist among them in the implementation of a lockdown, including cultural issues, individual characteristics, and others, due to their local circumstances. In administrative science, we usually call these differences policy gaps. The policy gaps among each of the cities should be explored in future studies. Third, Wuhan experienced the first large-scale outbreak of COVID-19 and was the first city to close down. The government and citizens of Wuhan were under the greatest pressure to stop the spread of the virus. Subsequent lockdowns in China were based on the experiences of Wuhan City, which undoubtedly enhanced the confidence and success rate of the later closures. This affected the later data.

Conclusions

The present research explores feedback from citizens who were living in the quarantine areas, and investigates the outcomes and performance of lockdown as a policy instrument during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. This study provided two contributions. First, we assessed the proportion of respondents who are satisfied with the efficiency of the lockdown in preventing the epidemic from spreading. Second, we found several issues that provided comfort and eased the frustration of citizens in the process of the lockdown and quarantine.

There were two research questions in the article: 1) Were the people who were living in the quarantine areas satisfied with the lockdown initiative during the COVID-19 outbreak period?, and 2) Which aspects of lockdown as a policy instrument are strongly associated with the experiences of people who were quarantined during the COVID-19 outbreak period? For the first question, as shown in the survey results, the number of positive views was 1,601 out of 2,627 (60.9%). Only 397 people were dissatisfied with the performance and outcomes of the lockdown initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic period, and the remaining 627 people (23.8%) held a neutral attitude. Hence, the answer to this question is “yes,” as the attitudes of citizens expressed in this research were positive. For the second research question, we used an ordered logistic regression to analyze the data. We found that the information disclosure, reasonable resource allocation, and a timely response from the government were significantly associated with the experiences of people who were involved in the process of the lockdown and quarantine.

The findings of this research provide important insights for the Chinese government and policymakers in other countries to facilitate administrative means such as lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of implementing efficient policies, providing comfort, addressing the frustrations of citizens, and limiting the spread of the virus. This research also provides a good foundation for studying difficulties in managing disasters, and these efforts will be the goals of future studies.