China’s rebound in societal trust

Something far more important than short-term economic growth or tech prowess

My Substack account got suspended for a couple of days.

My home page showed this message “We’ve removed your publication from public view due to a violation of Substack’s Spam & Phishing policy”.

I petitioned and Substack replied there was some “glitch” resulting in a wrongful suspension.

Since my posts are hardly extremist by Substack’s standard and there is no paywall, I suspect the suspension was the result of some angry Indians, upset with my recent piece, who ganged together and filed a spam report.

They have lots of practice as trolls – after all, Modi suspended TikTok in India as well as thousands of other Chinese apps including Temu and Shein for being Chinese.

Presumably, some sensitive Indian ego was offended with my article on the myth about India becoming the next China https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-india-becoming-the-next

This proves my thesis in the essay – dealing with reality is not exactly the forte for Indians. With those trolls, I wish them better luck next time.

Let’s switch gear and talk about trust in China.

Trust is the glue that holds society together. It binds communities, shapes institutions, and fuels economic activities.

The biggest collateral damage of the 10-year turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution has been the loss of trust for individuals and institutions alike.

People have bemoaned it and, having spent early childhood during those years, I thought trust might never come back again.

In the Three Body sci-fi novel by Liu Cixin, the main character, Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist, lost so much trust and faith in humanity that she voluntarily sent out earth’s coordinates to the “three-body civilization”, inviting an alien invasion to reform humanity.

She lost her father to the mindless struggles against intellectuals during Cultural Revolution. She herself was also repeatedly betrayed by the people around her from family to co-workers caught in the fever.

A worldly reader of my essays, who visited China in the past and is visiting again, wrote in the comment section of one of my recent essays, “what amazes me about China’s transformation is the high trust society it has developed and how genuinely helpful everyone is”.

This struck a chord as I recently read a survey, which put China among the world’s highest trust societies, along with the Nordic nations, long famous for their social cohesion.

In my view, this is a development that has far greater and long-lasting societal impact than short-term economic growth or technological progress.

After all, in a high trust society, people’s default assumption is that strangers, institutions, and even competitors will act honestly, competently and without malice.

This produces a cascade of economic, social and psychological pay-offs hard to replicate any other way – lower transactional costs, cheaper credit, higher innovation velocity, and healthier, happier life.

Put simply, high generalized trust is the only public good that simultaneously makes markets larger, governments cheaper, people healthier and life more pleasant.

Trust cannot be bought, only accumulated through consistent, observable reciprocity over time.

The Chinese trust in fellow citizens, the Party and the government, media, police, courts, banks, and universities is among the highest worldwide.

According to a 2024 Harvard Belfer Center study, people’s trust and satisfaction of the central government is consistently over 90% in the two decades when the study was carried out bi-annually.

So, what accounted for the surprising rebound of trust in the Chinese society?

I think four contributing factors are responsible for the transformation –

- Technology

- Accountability system (especially the anti-corruption campaign)

- Social Credit System

- Revival of Confucianism

Technology enables trust

Technology is extensively used to reduce bad behaviors and lower the trust barriers.

China has become a cashless society since the early 2010s. Mobile payment is prevalent and few carry cash anymore. Pickpockets and robberies barely exist as a result.

Mobile phones are registered under real name and burners are illegal.

Law enforcement deploys CCTV surveillance, cell phone position triangulation, and facial recognition extensively, making crimes exceptionally risky and costly.

It made national news when 5 criminals on the run for years, for separate crimes, were captured in a Jacky Cheung (a Hong Kong pop star) concert when they were identified by facial recognition software used in the police security system at the stadium.

In Chinese cities, residents scan the QR code, posted in communal spaces, of the police officer in charge of their area and can get in touch via WeChat in real time.

As a result, violent crimes are virtually non-existent in cities large and small. Women can go out in the short hours at night with little fear of harassment. Physical security is taken for granted.

In Chinese urban daily life, 30-minute door to door delivery, self-help pick-up at Taobao’s drop sites, and 24*7 online customer service are the norm.

Consumers make purchases with complete ease of mind. They leave merchandise at doorstep, unguarded, for return pick-up.

In most Chinese cities, average wait time for a Didi, China’s equivalent of Uber, is 2-4 minutes and costs one fifth of a ride in Singapore.

Didi annually handles around 11 billion rides in China alone, identical to Uber’s global volume.

Real-time surveys, prevalent in commercial, government, and healthcare services, provide channels for instant feedback.

Big data analytics help identify service bottlenecks and sources of complaints. Robots are taking up manual work, such as delivering towels and toiletry in hotels.

Technology provides a closed-loop system for constant service improvements, in addition to risk management and crime prevention.

AI and humanoids will further improve efficiency and experience through automation and machine intelligence.

Earning trust through accountability

Food quality and pollution were major social issues in China at the turn of the century.

There was an infamous baby formula scandal in 2008 when a major producer, Sanlu Dairy, added melamine, a chemical compound, to fresh milk to boost the protein content of milk powder.

This resulted in nearly 300,000 child victims who suffered urinary infections and other severe diseases.

When the scandal broke out, the central government directed a massive crackdown on illegal additives to baby food, later across the entire food industry.

Sanlu Dairy was shut down and its chairman and management team sent to prison. 26 people were prosecuted and received jail sentences, including the CEO.

2 individuals, directly responsible for producing and procuring the melamine chemical, were given the death penalty.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, many Chinese cities suffered under toxic air quality as a result of rapid industrialization, car growth, and coal-burning power plants.

In 2013, Beijing had record-breaking 58 days above PMI10 heavy pollution threshold.

The Chinese government started to enforce vigorous environment standards, closing down polluting factories, encouraging EV adoption, and shifting energy mix away from hydrocarbons to green energy.

President Xi personally prioritized environmental protection and green economy as national goals over GDP growth targets.

The result is a nation-wide improvement in air and water cleanup. Beijing had only 4 heavy smog days with unhealthy PMI readings in 2024, mainly due to the sand storm from the Mongolian deserts.

As a byproduct, China has become the world champion in EVs and all forms of green energy – solar, wind, hydro, bio fuel, and nuclear power.

The most important thrust to regain public trust in government and institutions is the ongoing anti-corruption campaign that President Xi launched since the start of his term.

Literally millions of officials from Politburo Standing Committee member to village chiefs have been investigated, prosecuted, removed and jailed in a running campaign that promises to go after “tigers” and “flies”.

Just last month, 9 senior military general officers were removed from their posts and put under prosecution.

This includes the Deputy Chairman of the Central Military Commission, who is second in command in the military hierarchy headed by President Xi himself.

Many in the West characterize China’s anti-corruption drive as internal factional struggles. But the characterization is naïve and entirely misses the point that many officials, who are prosecuted for corruption, were promoted during President Xi’s term and some by himself.

Beijing’s anti-corruption program specifically has a 10-year accountability “claw-back” clause. It specifies an official is held accountable for any corruption or misuse of power during his term for up to 10 years after he leaves the post,

It also requires a full audit when officials leave their posts, including for promotion or retirement.

Power without accountability is dangerous in both democratic and authoritarian systems.

In the West today, government officials are seldomly held accountable for their actions on the job once their terms expire.

As the sole ruling party, China adopts a life-time accountability system. Despite the shortcomings of the one-party system, trust can be built and sustained when accountability is strictly enforced.

Social Credit System to institutionalize trust

A central tool to enforce accountability and trust is the implementation of the Social Credit System, an initiative belligerently twisted into a dystopian social control tool by the dishonest western media.

The core aim of the Social Credit System is to build a high-trust society by rewarding compliance and punishing violations through disclosure and transparency.

The system has three components – government credit, enterprise credit, and individual credit.

Individual credit contains many elements used for personal credit rating by credit card companies worldwide. It also includes civil/criminal records, litigations, disputes, etc.

Beyond individuals, millions of government agencies and businesses are assigned credit scores based on compliance records, consumer feedback, approval ratings (for govt agencies), and economic activities such as bad loans, litigations, environmental records, fines, or administrative penalties.

Credit records of government agencies are open to the public, while business and personal data is strictly controlled by the centralized social credit management agency.

Firms and individuals with high data-driven algorithmic credit scores are awarded with faster permits, fewer audits, and lower insurance premiums, while repeat offenders are flagged in real time and costs are imposed.

Red-lists and black-lists are publicized to promote integrity and good behavior in commercial, civic, and online interactions.

This “put everything under the sun” approach of disclosure and transparency has significantly reduced trust barriers and improved individual, firm, and government behaviors.

This stands in sharp contrast with the so called “dark money” in elective political systems like the US, where donors don’t need to disclose their identities and no check-and-balance to counter money influence in politics.

Internalizing trust through revival of Confucian teachings

Confucius teachings have been central to Chinese life and governance for over 2,000 years. It emphasizes moral integrity, social harmony, respect for authority, and family values.

One key aspect of Confucian teachings is on individual cultivation – a person should strive to become a jun zi – the noble person.

To Confucius, a noble person must possess four critical qualities – ren, compassion; zhi, wisdom and knowledge; xin – integrity and reliability; and yi – righteousness and morality. Leaders are expected to possess all 4 qualities.

To Confucius and his followers, one should strive to have both virtue and talent, combining moral integrity with capability (de cai).

On social governance, the core Confucian concept is “meritocracy”, achieved through royal exams (ke ju) and on-job performance records (zheng ji). This ensures the selection of the most competent to govern.

Such selection process is distinctively different from the western “democratic” election process – it is data-driven and transparent rather than popularity- and emotion-driven.

The recent Civil Servant exam demonstrated the competitiveness of such a process – nearly 3 million applicants sat for the exam that would eventually recruit just 38,000 positions.

The meritocracy system generates deep-felt trust in the governance institutions and the caliber of the people running them. Slackers simply don’t get in, as a rule.

To sum up, China has returned to a high trust society even as economic growth slows down and job opportunities become scarce.

The country is going through a dramatic transformation of economic development model and technological breakthroughs, moving from quantitative growth to qualitative growth.

The most important political trend of our time is the spread of governance focused on citizen welfare and problem solving rather than ideology.

Trust serves as the underlying foundation.