Effects of Culture on Value of Connection in Covid-19 Pandemic : Evidence from China

The study has investigated the impact of the COVID-19 on the interactions and arrangements of Chinese political-connected provincial and central ministries officials. China is the country from where this virus started, and it disturbed the whole system of China, incredibly politically connected local and central ministerial officials' placements arrangements. In this study, we focused only on one province, Guangxi, to make our topic more transparent and attractive for the researchers. We have collected data on the Covid-19 crisis from December 1, 2019, to April 30, 2020, and also observed the cultural and media slant impacts on politically connected officials' transfers and postings. The study based on Acemoglu et., (2016) revealed three kinds of methods to measure political connections: (1) schedule connections, (2) personal connections, (3) location connections. The results show that the COVID-19 and media slant significantly influence politically connected firms' officials' transfer and connections. During the COVID-19 period, companies with a strong Guanxi culture had a higher chance of receiving political connections impacts for transferring provincial and central ministerial officials. We suggest that future research can be considered in other provinces of China to assess these three approaches for political connections with culture and media slant