Generalized trust in modern Chinese society

Abstract

The article is focused on the study of the factors of generalized trust in modern Chinese society. The use of cross-cultural research data to reveal the content of the concept of generalized trust and its structure in different national cultures is justified. For a more complete understanding of the results of sociological studies of interpersonal trust in China, their interpretation is proposed using the concept of “relationship-based trust”, reflecting the specificity of the Chinese phenomenon of trusting relationships as a personalized, affective, instrumental social bond. The purpose of the study is to develop a conceptual model of generalized trust in contemporary Chinese culture and to assess the possibility of using the data of cross-cultural sociological studies of generalized trust to reveal the content of the concept of “trust” in different national cultures, to study the social attitudes of trust. The novelty of the research results consists in the reasoned justification of the interpretation of the concept of interpersonal trust in the modern culture of China by means of the concept of “relationship-based trust”, as well as in the justification of the relevance of the application of the data of cross-cultural sociological research of generalized trust to reveal the content of the concept of generalized trust and its structure in different national cultures.