A reading written by Jie Lu discussed in class one day talked about the relationship between the people of China and its central government. It appears that there is high trust in the central government by the Chinese people, despite there being some negative reactions to certain unreliable and unfavorable aspects. However, even with its questionable nature, the Chinese national government is still about to create confidence from within the people, due to the fact that it is able to display an image of having good intentions for the citizens, and by acting like it knows the people well and that it is setting them up for success, this allows the general population to more likely evaluate the government as competent and trustworthy.

Of course, there are a number of environmental factors that have influenced the people’s ability to trust their government. Part of it is cultural; unlike Western states that seem to promote individualism, China has a large emphasis on collectivism, which results in more trust being easily gained, due to the fact that authorities really only have to fulfill the needs of the community, and not the more specific and difficult desires of each single person. Additionally, the national government and CCP control a large portion of the Internet, and thus can artificially alter the thoughts of the people about the government to an extent. Furthermore, since many parts of China are rural and distant from urban government areas, farmers and peasants, who make up a large portion of the Chinese Chinese population, are more inclined to give approval and trust of the government.

Despite the fact that China is a neoauthoritarian state, the idea of this article and overall situation can be applied to other states and forms of governance. China is a functioning and relatively stable country because even though the authorities have large control over the infrastructure, the people are in line with the government and believe the ruling party is competent. One speculated reason as to why democratic states work is because the citizens trust and cooperate with the government. As seen in developed nations like the United States, people generally accept the American federal government and have faith that it is genuinely doing its best to be fair and be concerned with the welfare of the citizens. However, countries like Venezuela have a very corrupt democratic government, thus people generally ignore and disobey the laws set in place by the authorities. As a result, the nation is very unstable and there are frequent cases of civil unrest, food and basic item shortages, and major economic problems.