The Magnitude and Resilience of Trust in the Center: Evidence from Interviews with Petitioners in Beijing and a Local Survey in Rural China

This article proposes two explanations for why public confidence in China's central authorities has appeared high and stable since the early 1990s. Drawing on interviews with petitioners in Beijing, it argues that trust in the Center is resilient in the sense that individuals who might be expected to lose trust often manage to retain it by redefining what constitutes the Center and what is trustworthy about it. On one hand, they remain confident by excluding authorities they find untrustworthy from the Center. On the other hand, they remain confident in the Center's commitment even when they no longer trust its capabilities. Drawing on a local survey conducted in 2011, this article suggests that global and generic measures used in national surveys may overstate the amount of public confidence in central authorities by missing two subtle variations. First, people may sound confident about central leaders in general while they only trust one or some leaders. Second, people may sound fully confident about central leaders while they only have partial trust.