Mobilising the Entrepreneurial Self to Manage the Crisis: Community Group-Buying during the Shanghai Lockdown

Abstract

The COVID pandemic disrupted traditional entrepreneurial governance arrangements. When the state's action could not effectively govern society, the “entrepreneurial self” began to emerge and manage the crisis. Using Shanghai as a case study, this research examines the dynamics of “community group-buying” during its city-wide lockdown in 2022. It shows how a small group of residents, known as group-buying entrepreneurs (tuanzhang), mobilise community members and organise collective food purchases to address the resource shortage during the lockdown. We find that group-buying is not merely a rediscovery of the community in times of crisis. Despite its spontaneous formation, we demonstrate that group-buying is ultimately captured, endorsed, and instrumentalised by the local state for crisis management. Through this, we present a new manifestation of the “entrepreneurial self” and its paradoxical functions—exercising community self-organisation while simultaneously extending state power in territorial forms. We also highlight the state's central role in China's entrepreneurial governance, even in the crisis mode when its capacities were under pressure.