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The Geography of Political Trust in Urbanizing China: A Comparative Analysis of Trust in Local Government Among Rural Villagers, Rural-to-Urban Migrants, and Urban Dwellers




Author(s)

ZHANG Chen, LI Ziming

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2185/2025.04.001

Duke-Kunshan University, Kunshan, China Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

The legacy of rural-urban developmental imbalance and China’s household registration institution (i.e., the hukou system) stratify Chinese citizens into three populations—rural villagers, urban dwellers, and rural-to-urban migrants. These groups differ in values, lifestyles, and socioeconomic status. They have also been assigned to different tiers of government control and services based upon their location and hukou identities. Effective governance of these diverse and divided populations in urbanizing China requires a deeper understanding of their potentially different political orientations and attitudes toward government and why such differences exist. However, despite their demographic significance—by 2014, China’s rural-to-urban migrant population had reached to 253 million—rural-to-urban migrants remain unrepresented in studies of Chinese people’s political trust, which focus more on either rural villagers or urban dwellers. This study addresses this gap by situating Chinese rural-to-urban migrants at the center of triadic analytical framework and comparing their trust in local (i.e., county-level) government to two reference groups: rural villagers and urban dwellers. We utilize data from the China Family Panel Study (CFPS) in 2014 and employ the propensity score matching (PSM) method to match rural-to-urban migrants and rural villagers with comparable propensities to migrate. This matched comparison found that rural-to-urban migrants are 4.91% less trusting of their county government than their rural villager counterparts. This result reflects a negative “urban effect”: The urban society may erode political trust compared to rural environments. Then the method of mechanical matching (MM) is used to compare rural-to-urban migrants and urban dwellers. This matched comparison found that rural-to-urban migrants are 3.2% more trusting than their urban counterparts. This indicates that the migrant identity (i.e., being a rural hukou holders in cities) is associated with higher trust levels. This geography of political trust signals a more complex rural-urban divide in the citizen-government relationship in China. Different populations’ various relationship with local government therefore merits additional attention to place-based and population-specific policies to rebuild trust.

rural-to-urban migrants, rural-urban divide, political trust, propensity score matching, China