信任、信任的起源与信任的变迁

本文通过对世界76个国家和地区信任度的比较得出结论，中国的社会信任度并不算低，处于同一文化圈的日本、韩国等国家在世界范围内来看也处于较高水平。本文认为，中国的信任问题不是初始存量过少的问题，而是社会转型期信任存量过快下降的问题。笔者主张，信任的起源和信任变迁的原因并不相同。就东亚及中国的情况而言，信任的起源与以儒家为代表的传统文化和价值观具有密切关系。对信任下降更为概括性的解释是不确定性：当社会的不确定性增加时，社会信任就会下降。中国当前信任度的下降主要是由于社会快速的转型而导致不确定性增加，并进而造成了信任的下降。最后，笔者对如何从宏观层次抑制信任快速下降提出了若干建议。

Trust,Its Origin and Transition in Mainland China

Using data from the four waves of World Values Survey （WVS） and other survey data,this article finds a relatively high level of trust in East-Asian Confucian societies,including mainland China,Taiwan,South Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Such a high level of social trust appears to have originated from the Confucian culture,which puts an emphasis in being trustful and trustworthy. Nevertheless,some of these societies do face a problem of declining social trust. In the case of China,I argue that such a decline at the current moment is the result of increasing social uncertainties caused by rapid transformation of China＇s society.