Kinship Ties to Government Staff and Local Political Trust: Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

Drawing on the Rural Socioeconomic Survey in China, we for the first time present descriptive information about Chinese citizens’ kinship ties to local government staff in rural areas, where around 40 percent of the respondents have at least one close relative in the family working in the local government. On average, such kinship ties have a significant but negative correlation with both the trust in staff of local township and county governments, and the trust in staff of judicial, legislative, and public security agencies. This negative effect, however, is not linearly additive with the number of kinship ties. Taken together, these findings lend support to the negative association between local kinship embeddedness and confidence in local official staff, highlighting a relational approach to understanding political trust in Chinese society.