The Structure And Transition Of Political Trust In Contemporary China: 1978-2010

In the past 30 years of China's reform and opening-up, great changes have taken place in the economic and political structures as well as social structure, exerting profound impacts on the features, structures and functions of the trust in the political system. Thus, it bears much significance to probe into the structures and levels of political trust in contemporary China, to analyze the evolution of political trust from 1978 to 2010 and to uncover the in-depth relationship between the political trust and political development, which will contribute to the broadening of research scope of the political trust, the advancement of modern transformation as well as the political democratization process, the promotion of the managerial level of modern government and the enhancement of social harmony and stability, both theoretically and practically.Defined in teams of structural elements, the political trust is a kind of reasonable expectation that the subjects of trust such as individual citizens, social groups or organizations, under the influence of information communication system, cast on the political system and its elements, the relationship among these elements and the running state in a certain political setting. Political trust includes four structural elements, that is, subject, object, medium and ring body.Normally, the running of political trust will emerge as a three-stage process of the interaction of the four elements. And the running would go like this:under the influence of ring body and taking the medium as a communication channel, the political trust that subjects show towards objects will appear as basic-level trust, intermediate-level trust and high-level trust.The evolution of political trust is caused by the interaction of its structural elements during the course of transition. Since the implementation of reform and opening-up policy, there has been a huge transformation in the structural elements and an ideal-level to actual-level transition in the political trust. The initial period of reform and opening-up (1978—1992) witnessed great fluctuations and a noticeable privatization trend in political trust. The foundation of political trust shifted from ideological persuasion mobilized by charisma to identity with government performance based on rational calculation. During the deepening period of reform and opening-up (1993—2010), political trust presents four characteristics, that is, fluctuation in high-level political trust, structural imbalance in political trust, serious run-off of governmental official's trust and exacerbation of political trust's risk by mass incidents. There is an obvious tendency of normalization, actualization and rationalization. The basis of political trust shifted gradually from identity with government performance dominated by economic performance to common view towards government under the context of multi-interests.During the process of political development in China, political trust has many important functions. It can contribute to the legality of political system, safeguard the stability of political system and simplify the complexity of political system. But political trust also has its limits. If it lacks commensurate restriction system, political trust can be easily misused. On the other hand, due political disbelief has positive and sound functions and can be served as an important driving force in political development and progress. Unmixed political trust or political disbelief cannot satisfy the need of political system in a democratic system. Only establish a complex political trust, which integrates the advantages of both and eliminates their drawbacks, can we ensure the political system runs smoothly. In such mechanism, political trust plays a guiding role and exercises the main function; and political disbelief can be a subsidiary mechanism, serving as a potential check -and -balance and error-correcting method, and is supposed to work when the misuses of trust occur.