Abstract
The premodern Chinese state maintained strengths and continuity with a minben-meritocratic belief system. This belief system continues to reproduce itself into the contemporary era and becomes a vibrant factor affecting the public's political beliefs and attitudes. This chapter proposes a theory of political culture that puts the minben-meritocratic beliefs at the center, and shows its stronger explanatory power to two main patterns of political trust in China, i.e. how and why the Chinese public show such a high level of trust in their government, especially the central/national government, and why they trust different levels of government differently. The chapter calls the conventional theories of political culture, that is, the postmaterialist theory and the “critical citizens” thesis, into question when applied to the study of political trust in China.
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Wang, Z. (2023). The Minben Meritocratic State’s Impact on Contemporary Political Culture. In: Wang, Z. (eds) The Long East Asia. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_10
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