Regional Comparison Of Public Trust In Chinese Government

Trust is the foundation of interpersonal communication and wellbeing, and the cornerstone of system was establishment and social development. Trust issues have been a major concern in recent years. The international emergence of all kinds of trust crisis has made the "trust" issue become the focus of research for multiple disciplines. As a major focus in the study of "trust" issue, "government trust" issue has been extensively investigated by the academia. "Government trust" is an important and meaningful topics and recent events undermining the credibility of the government have made this issue under unprecedented attention.In this study, we utilized 2010 China General Social Survey data (CGSS2010), took the central government trust and the local governments trust as the dependent variable; the sociodemographic class variable, individual social status class variable and the cultural and institutional class variable as independent variables. Using an Ordinal Logistic Regression Model, we separately investigated the current status of the residents’trust in different levels of government from nationwide; from eastern, central, and from northern and southern regions. Based on previous studies, we provided a comprehensive interpretation of the results by combining the viewpoints of economics, Culturism, and New Institutionalism.The study found that:First, trust in the Chinese government currently has a significant difference among levels, trust is significantly higher in the central government compared to the local governments. Second, trust in the Chinese government currently has a significant regional difference. Trust in the central government shows an increase from eastern to central to western regions; while trust in the local governments is higher in eastern and western regions than central regions. Trusts in the central government and local governments both show a trend of higher in North and lower in South. This observation has rarely been reported in the past. Thirdly, the socio-demographic class variables have different degrees of influence on the formation of the pattern of government trust. The effects of Party membership only exist when people make judgments about the central government trust. Fourth, individual social status class variables such as income factors and subjective factors have inverted U-shaped relationship and a positive linear relationship with the trust in Chinese government. Fifth, the negative impact from unfair treatment experiences and positive impact from political participation experiences also requires more attention.