The Study Of Chinese Institutional Trust During Social Transformation

In all ages, trust permeates in activities of all social interactions. China's traditional social trust is built on kinship based on interpersonal trust. In the early eighties of the twentieth century, the reform and opening up boomed the market economy in China, while a large number of people swarmed into cities while the agricultural society collapsed gradually, accelerating the urbanization process. China turned from a traditional society into a modern society in transition. The pattern of social acquaintances was degraded and replaced by the arrival of a stranger society. The traditional model of interpersonal trust couldn't meet the development needs of today's society, triggering a series of social crisis of confidence; a new mechanism of social trust was needed to be established in order to maintain the sound operation of social interaction activities.Terms of institutional trust through institutional constraints on the role of social behavior and social interaction between members has become a regular act to follow and can be predicted, prompting strangers to build trust in a short time, and maintaining an effective mechanism of social trust in a transition period of China. As the experimental field of China's reform and opening up, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone leads the pace of social transformation in China and steps into a stranger society, where social trust was firstly hit by the impact of traditional and modern institutional trust conflict. It can be said that the institutional trust development in Shenzhen, is a microcosm in China regarding to the overall situation. In this paper, based on the concepts and theory of trust, as well as Shenzhen institutional trust research and case studies, I interpret the development of institutional trust in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and make analysis of the reasons for the failure of institutional trust mechanisms and additionally discuss methods on rebuilding the system of trust. I try to give enlightening thoughts to the research of social institutional trust system, in the hopes of raising further studies on such subject in China from other scholars.