Constructed Hierarchical Government Trust in China: Formation Mechanism and Political Effects

The Chinese government has long enjoyed a higher level of popular trust in its central authority than in its local governments, which means that the Chinese public’s trust in government is hierarchical. While existing research has highlighted hierarchical trust’s role in bolstering the Chinese regime’s rule, the formation mechanism for such trust has not been adequately explored empirically. In this paper, we use data from the China General Social Survey (2010) to explore the formation mechanism of hierarchical government trust and find that economic development, adherence to traditional values, and high frequency of Internet usage all contribute to the decrease of hierarchical government trust. These findings challenge conventional views that cultural traditions and Internet use help sustain hierarchical government trust and show that propaganda is the only variable that sustains the pattern of hierarchical government trust. We further challenge existing literature that views hierarchical government trust as a natural outcome of China’s hierarchical administrative structure and empirically prove that such trust is in fact intentionally constructed by the central government through propaganda campaigns and an institutional design aimed at strengthening the central government’s authority and at guiding people to divert dissent to local governments. Our findings make an important contribution to the dialogue and highlight a new area of authoritarian durability.

建构的中国差序政府信任：形成机制和政治效果

关键词：差序政府信任，现代化，经济发展，宣传，文化传统。

中国长期以来都是中央比地方政府更受公众信任，这意味着中国公众对政府的信任是差序性的 。尽管现有的研究揭示出差序信任在加强现政府统治上的作用，但这种信任的形成机制尚未得到充分的经验性考察。本文使用了中国综合社会调查（2010）的数据对此进行了研究，我们发现经济发展、遵从传统价值观以及频繁使用互联网分别对差序政府信任的下降起到了作用。这些发现挑战了认为文化传统和网络的使用有助于维护对政府的差序信任的常见看法。我们进一步挑战了那些把差序政府信任看成是中国的差序行政结构的自然产物的现有文献， 并通过经验研究证明了这种信任实际上是中央政府通过宣传动员刻意建构起来的，也是一种意在加强中央政府权威、引导人民使其异议被导向地方政府的制度设计。我们的研究发现对于威权持久性问题的对话做出了重要贡献，也凸显了它的一个新领域。

Translated from English by Li Guo