Cohort Difference And Periodical Change Of Political Trust In China In The 21^st Century

Political trust has always been the focus of domestic and foreign research and has become the most mature research field in political culture.However,Previous research on political trust in our country mostly focuses on a certain group or a certain region,the comparative analysis is also a cross-country or cross-regional horizontal comparison.They seldom examine temporal change,not mention to use Age-PeriodCohort(APC)framework.A few longitudinal studies covering certain years neither disentangle cohort effect from aging effect nor examine period effect.Exploring the changes of political trust since the beginning of the 21 st century will not only help to understand how people’s attitudes towards the government have changed in the context of rapid economic and social development,but also help clarify the reasons for the changes and offer a new perspective to maintain social stability and cohesion.Specifically,this study attempts to answer three questions: first,the changes of the political trust in Chinese during the first 15 years of the early 21 st century;second,whether there are cohort differences;third,what leads to these differences.Based on micro-level survey data and macro-level statistics data in 2002-2015,this paper makes an overall description of the changes in political trust in the first 15 years of the 21 st century,and analyze cohort differences and period changes using the APC framework.The main findings are as follows: Firstly,there is a slow decline in political trust as previous studies observed,and this decline generally existed in various social groups;Secondly,after separating the period and aging effect,the cohort differences in political trust indeed exists.Generally speaking,younger generations have lower levels of trust in government,and the differences between generations expands along with time;Finally,cultural values and subjective class status can partially explain the cohort differences in political trust,the periodical change of political trust is explained well by institutional performance,such as economic growth,social stability and accountability of government.