A central unresolved question in the study of Chinese politics is the level of citizen trust that the regime enjoys. For about two decades, the standard finding based on opinion research has been that there exist high levels of trust in the central government and that trust declines as we move down the party-state hierarchy towards lower levels and eventually reach the grassroots. Scepticism about these findings was justified, given that honest answers to questions about system support in an authoritarian context like that in China are unlikely (this is the well-known problem of preference falsification, where citizens publicly declare their support for the regime but privately oppose it). These reservations notwithstanding, no book-length study had appeared questioning the received wisdom of high trust in the centre until Lianjiang Li’s elegant new monograph.
This study is based on two local and two national surveys. The local surveys took place in 2006 and 2014 (with, respectively, 1,600 and 1,200 villagers interviewed). The national surveys include the 2015 and the 2019 waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (with, respectively, 4,068 and 4,941 respondents). These surveys provide a rich empirical basis for the author’s reconceptualization of political trust in China.
Several key insights emerge from this study. Some are conceptual and others empirical. At the conceptual level, we should note that the target of trust at the central level is the paramount leader of the party-state, rather than the central government itself (p. 3). Another important point that is developed throughout the study is that trustworthiness has two dimensions: namely, the commitment to ruling in the people’s interest and the capacity of the centre to compel local agents to enforce central policies (p. 3). A third conceptual intervention that undergirds the entire study is the notion of gradations of trust: total trust (which involves trust in commitment and capacity); partial trust (trust in commitment but distrust in capacity); scepticism (mistrust about commitment and capacity); and total distrust (lack of trust in commitment and capacity) (p. 3). The overarching point is that the concept of political trust does not apply fully to China, because citizens “cannot engineer a government or leadership change by revoking their trust through voting” and therefore “political trust in China implies a nonbinding hope rather than a binding expectation” (p. 16). Those conceptual interventions need to be taken seriously by scholars of trust in China.
Empirically, we can single out three contributions of this study. The first is most clearly presented in chapter three, which focuses on measurement. It is here that Li most directly challenges the conventional wisdom of high trust in the centre. While scholars often assert that over 80 per cent of the population trusts the centre, using the four types of trust (total, partial, scepticism and distrust), the current study demonstrates that only about a quarter of the population has total trust in the centre, based on the 2015 and 2019 Asian Barometer Surveys (p. 39). This finding calls into question the bulk of the existing literature on trust in China.
We should also note the empirical results in chapter five, which engages with the relationship between different types of trust and political participation in China. Some of the findings reconfirm the author’s earlier research, especially the co-authored work with Kevin O’Brien on rightful resistance. One example is the argument that trust in the centre’s commitment combined with distrust in its capacity can serve as a catalyst for citizens to protest against local officials (p. 91). Other findings are more counterintuitive. For example, with regard to total trust and scepticism, chapter five finds that both are associated with political inactivity. Moreover, the chapter provides evidence that partial trust is associated with a higher likelihood of joining a petition, whereas joining a collective protest is associated with total distrust. Those arguments deserve careful study.
The final empirical contribution that should be highlighted concerns the findings in chapter six about trust and system support. The author’s 2014 local survey shows that villagers with stronger distrust are more likely to support popular election of the president (p. 101). This result is noteworthy, even if it is not all that surprising. Similarly, though consistent with our expectations, the finding from the 2015 and 2019 national surveys that respondents with stronger confidence in the centre are more likely to accept single-party rule (pp. 108–109) is still important. In sum, scholars will find much to think about in this book, both on the conceptual and the empirical level.
This research will be of broad interest to China scholars in political science and sociology, as well as to researchers of authoritarianism who are working on the dictator’s dilemma, which stems from the incapacity of dictators to finetune repression and concessions due to their underlying uncertainty about the level of popular trust they might have. Li’s book suggests that trust in China is lower than we typically assume. This argument has clear theoretical and policy implications.
