Leiden University Student Repository

Song, Ganlu (2018)

The hierarchy trust in China, why do people trust the central government more?

Master thesis | Asian Studies (60 EC) (MA)

A commonly observed phenomenon is villagers have more trust in the central government rather than their local government in rural China. This article changes survey settings to urban areas and seeks to study sources of the trust gap and implications behind it. Survey findings indicate the so-called hierarchy trust does exist in urban China. Moreover, drawing on analyses of questionnaires and interviews, this article concludes that urbanites’ evaluations of government’s performance and intention, belief in Confucianism and collectivism values, life satisfaction, previous experiences with government significantly shape their political trust.

China

Hierarchy Trust

Urbanite

Trust in Government

Author

Song, Ganlu

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

East Asian Studies

Supervisors

Creemers, Rogier

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en