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Roland Boer who has written extensively about China, write in his 2021 Springer book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. A Guide for Foreigners, p. 281:

For Xi, the people’s standpoint (lichang) is basic and foundational (genben). [...] The original desire and the mission are, of course, one and the same: Communism. [...]

I could draw upon an impressive array of internationally collated surveys on confidence in the direction China is going, on trust in governance and public institutions, or in approval of the way the COVID- 19 pandemic was handled in China (Ipsos 2019; Edelman 2020; Cunningham et al. 2020). In all such surveys, we repeatedly find a percentage range from the 80s to the 90s for confidence, trust, and approval among the common people for governance as such.

But I would like to add some anecdotal evidence from reasonably extensive engagement with common people (laobaixing), with urban and rural workers. Perhaps a decade ago, the joke among such people was that the government might say it is focused on the renmin, the people, but that it was actually concerned with the renminbi, the alternative name for the Chinese yuan. In the last few years, I have noticed a distinct change: now people increasingly feel Xi is ‘pretty good [bucuo]’. How so? He invokes Mao Zedong and is felt to have the common people’s interests at heart.

Is this true? Do all surveys indicate that the CPC and/or the Chinese government enjoy 80% to 90% domestic approval rating on practically any topic/issue?

(Side note: I've chosen this as a more serious claim of what's heard in songs, etc., which however tends to have a more personalist angle.)

If you think I'm overinterpreting the quote (in formulating the title of this Q), then answer according just to the enumerated claims: "confidence in the direction China is going, on trust in governance and public institutions, or in approval of the way the COVID- 19 pandemic was handled in China" and "confidence, trust, and approval among the common people for governance as such" (whatever "as such" you think it means.)

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  • 1
    Did you check the references cited in the quotation included in this question?
    – Dave
    May 3 at 18:03
  • 1
    If they were government surveys Xinhua style, then the author might be referring to real surveys. But, taking those surveys as a credible evidence is a little bit far fetched.
    – mustermax
    May 3 at 19:50
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    The quote says "confidence, trust, and approval among the common people for governance as such", but you reworded it as "almost all their decisions" or "practically any topic/issue".
    – user62611
    May 4 at 1:47
  • 3
    This seems difficult. The literal statement is one about the reported percent of positive sentiment in "all such surveys", so answering might technically require examining all of the relevant surveys in order to assess whether they indicate an 80-90% approval rating. However, answering the literal question, which seems to be about survey results, doesn't address the underlying methodological difficulties of assessing public sentiment in a despotic society.
    – Dave
    May 4 at 14:22
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    Considering that income inequality in China is high relative to the set of wealthy countries and possibly rising, and that it has more billionaires than any country besides the United States, it seems hard to believe that Xi is trying to move the country towards Communism. If he is, he is clearly not succeeding.
    – Obie 2.0
    May 8 at 18:58

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