Political Trust in Urban China

Abstract

This chapter explores political trust in urban China. Even though studies on political trust have proliferated in democracies since the late 1960s, there have been few studies of this issue in authoritarian countries. This is probably due to the fact that it is not easy to obtain an accurate measure of political trust in authoritarian settings where people are afraid of openly expressing their true feelings about the authorities. Difficulties in measuring the level of political trust in authoritarian settings does not mean, however, that the level of political trust cannot be measured or that it is not an important issue in authoritarian countries. The two key questions to be answered in this chapter are: What is the level of political trust among Chinese citizens of their government? and what factors affect their level of political trust?