“Did the new crown shake the government’s confidence in the Chinese people?” The Washington Post published a poll on May 5.
A Canadian scholar, after questioning nearly 20,000 Chinese, came up with a definitive answer.
Screen shot of the Washington Post report
Gary Wu, a sociologist at York University in Canada, found in an article in the Washington Post on May 5 that a series of investigations into the Chinese government’s response to the epidemic had promoted its “legitimacy.” 98% of Chinese respondents trust the Chinese government.
Wu Jiming, a sociologist at York University in Canada (once in a blue plaid shirt on the front row) went to the mainland to conduct elections and exchanged faculty and students at Wuhan University.
Since the resumption of Wuhan in April last year, Wu Jim’s group has held a referendum on the Chinese people. First, the 2018 World Values Survey showed that 95% of the Chinese population said they trusted the federal government the most; But 69% have the same confidence in local governments.
This time, Professor Wu’s group divided China’s “government” into federal, provincial, municipal, and district governments. According to survey data, 98% of respondents trust the federal government; Public confidence in local government has also increased compared to 2018—91%, saying they “trust” or “fully trust” local city-level government. The confidence level of the district government is 93%, the city government is 94% and the provincial government is 95%. All are more than 90%, which is much higher than the 69% calculated in 2018.
The survey results show that the Chinese people have high confidence in governments at all levels.
The poll asked respondents whether confidence in the government had changed since the eruption. Nearly half (49%) of interviewers said they trusted the federal government more after the outbreak; 48% said their belief levels remained unchanged before and after the outbreak; Only 3% said their confidence levels had dropped. According to local governments, 63% said their confidence level has not changed and 30% said their confidence level has increased.
What does it mean that people trust the government so much?
Wu Jiming said that faith is divided into “widespread belief” and “specific belief”. Scattered beliefs are driven by a kind of profound psychological orientation and values to the morality of the political system. Particular trust is based on how citizens evaluate the particular performance of government.
Opinion polls by Wu Jiming’s team show that only 1% of Chinese citizens have a negative and angry attitude towards the Chinese government’s anti-epidemic measures; 55% of people have widespread belief and 44% have specific beliefs.
Analysis of the survey results shows that the government cannot misunderstand such a high level of trust as the “political fear” of the people. At the same time, this is a similar conclusion obtained by many previous studies.
Finally, according to Wu Jiming, their survey was different from other questionnaires published only on the Internet. They followed a live interview system. Wu Jiming’s team worked with 17 Chinese scholars to recruit 600 students from 53 universities across the country, and they interviewed each other to make sure the models came from different regions. At the same time, the survey confirms that the interviewer is anonymous. In the end, 19,816 Chinese citizens from 31 provinces were interviewed.
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