Political Depression and the Afterlives of Neurasthenia

Political Depression and the Afterlives of Neurasthenia

‘Political depression’ (政治性抑郁), first introduced into Chinese online discourse in the summer of 2019, is a term that gained wide circulation during the Covid-19 pandemic. At first, it was associated with anger and despair at the authorities’ mishandling of the Wuhan outbreak and its rapid slide out of control. Later in the prolonged crisis, it became linked to the feelings of helplessness and exhaustion produced by the zero-Covid policy, which w…