How and why people support or disapprove of governmental responses to public crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is an important issue in public opinion research. Since 2020, China's strict anti-COVID policy has protected lives but faced resistance. Drawing on Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2021 data, we investigated the covariates associated with the support for the anti-COVID measures in China, arguing that “critical citizens” (measured by university-level education) and “discontented citizens” (measured by perceptions of fairness) were more likely to disapprove of the anti-pandemic measures, and political trust would moderate the association. The findings showed that less educated and more satisfied citizens supported the government measures no matter what, whereas educated and discontented citizens showed conditional support—only when they had high political trust. These findings suggest reasons for the backlash to China's zero-COVID policy and have broader implications for political trust and public opinion research.