Keywords: social trust, political trust, China

Political trust is often discussed in the backdrop of democratic governments, however
less is known about political trust in authoritarian governments. In the Chinese
context, various factors have been found to strengthen political trust such as economic
performance, at the same time critical attitude and regional disparities have
diminished political trust. With Chinese President Xi Jinping re-elected for office for
the 3rdterm based on the amendments to the constitution, do people hold greater or
lesser political trust is the question that needs to be addressed. Therefore, we ask:
what factors explain variation in Chinese citizens’ self-reported levels of political
trust? We propose to explain the variation in levels of political trust among Mainland
Chinese citizens using data from the fifth wave of Asian Barometer released in 2023.
The proposed study tests explanations of political trust in China focusing on system
performance evaluation, self-assessed individual circumstances, and an argument that
we have developed about the role that generalized and specific social trust play in
shaping levels of political trust. Using an ordered probit regression analysis combined
with first differences analysis, we test these explanations for their relative power to
predict levels of political trust