The physical and virtual presence of the local state and citizens’ life satisfaction in urbanising China

China’s rapid and ongoing urbanisation has led to the expansion of the local state. The state, traditionally exhibited as physical institutions of government, has emerged virtually in recent years based on intricate network infrastructure systems, such as social media platforms. Scholars contend that a strong physical state infrastructure enhances government function and can increase citizens’ life satisfaction; in contrast, the state’s virtual presence is unlikely to exert a substantial independent impact because of its reliance on the state’s physical infrastructure. In this research, we calibrated innovative measures of the state’s physical and virtual presence. Combined with data from the 2018 Urbanisation and Quality of Life Survey conducted in 40 sampling sites undergoing rural–urban transition, we further assessed how the local state’s physical and virtual presence is associated with citizens’ self-reported life satisfaction in the context of China’s national new-type urbanisation. Our results, based on three-level mixed-effects regressions, indicate that the local state’s bricks-and-mortar institutions do not correlate with citizens’ life satisfaction; rather, the establishment of a web-based, cost-effective, transparent, and coordinated virtual presence is associated with a higher level of life satisfaction among citizens. At a time when the Chinese central government emphasises its commitment to ‘people-centred’ urbanisation, the findings offer insight into the strategies that local governments could employ to improve governance quality and enhance citizens’ well-being.