Abstract
There is much talk about the trust crisis in China and the possible role of religion in rebuilding China’s moral order. This study is an attempt to examine religion’s impact on the emerging market economy in China, focusing on trust in business relations that might be generated by the Christian faith. Based on 43 in-depth interviews with Christian entrepreneurs in China, our study shows that the majority of our respondents tend to be: (1) more willing to be trustworthy after becoming Christians; (2) trusting people who share their faith more than others; (3) perceiving religious persons, regardless of what that religion is, as more trustworthy than the non-religious. Our study shows that religiosity is used by many Christian entrepreneurs as a category to guide their decision-making and that it is significant in stimulating and maintaining trust in and from others.
Highlights
There is much talk about the moral and spiritual crisis in China today, from President Xi Jinping, who was reported to be troubled by what he sees as “the country's moral decline and obsession with money” [1], to the over 80% of respondents of an online survey by China’s Xinhua News Agency in 2011 [2], who believed that popular trust in government and judicial affairs is in “urgent need of improvement.”
There was a recent report in The Telegraph on 28 November 2013, entitled “Restaurant confronts China’s moral crisis with free food,” which reports a 51-year-old Chinese entrepreneur from Fuzhou, Liu Pengfei, who opened his “Good One” buffet in China in what he said was “a bid to rescue a long-lost sense of trust in Chinese society” [18]
Will this be the case for Protestants in China that they, too, like Catholics, end up trusting primarily their family members and personal guanxi networks [34]? This paper is an attempt to provide an answer to the effect of Protestant Christianity on trust and trustworthiness, both within and between believers and others
Summary
There is much talk about the moral and spiritual crisis in China today, from President Xi Jinping, who was reported to be troubled by what he sees as “the country's moral decline and obsession with money” [1], to the over 80% of respondents of an online survey by China’s Xinhua News Agency in 2011 [2], who believed that popular trust in government and judicial affairs is in “urgent need of improvement.” China’s market reforms have made it from one of the world’s most backward economies to its most dynamic economy. Given that Protestant Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China, there are increasing numbers of people who argue that it could play a role in rebuilding. There was a recent report in The Telegraph on 28 November 2013, entitled “Restaurant confronts China’s moral crisis with free food,” which reports a 51-year-old Chinese entrepreneur from Fuzhou, Liu Pengfei, who opened his “Good One” buffet in China in what he said was “a bid to rescue a long-lost sense of trust in Chinese society” [18]. Liu’s story is not a typical case of faith—business integration It illustrates the enormous power of faith in motivating people to be trustworthy and in believers’ attempt to influence others to behave . Christian entrepreneurs’ trust in employees; (2) how faith affects their trust in clients and suppliers;.
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