who should we believe in?

China has suffered from an escalating trust crisis among the public despite the robust economic growth in the past decade, said a report January 7.

It showed that person-to-person trust continues to decline, with over 70 percent of the correspondents saying they do not trust in strange people. Apparently, they have the lowest level of confidence in businesses and enterprises, which some say is a result of the spate of product quality scandals.

The report noted that distrust grows among different spectrums of society, which can be seen in the lack of public confidence in government officials, law enforcement agents and hospital professionals who are often associated with abuse of power and bribery.

The report Chinese Social Mentality 2012-2013 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was compiled based on a survey in seven major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, with about 2,000 people interviewed.

Some say the report is inadequate to reflect the social atmosphere as it lacks sufficient representation of different demographic groups in the sample, but many agree with the CASS report based on what they experience and learn from mass media.

In 2008, a milk-formula scandal that left six babies dead and thousands of others sick rattled the whole country. Since then, food scandals including the recollected cooking oil from sewages and tainted steamed buns have substantially eroded social confidence in domestic enterprises and worsened the already fragile image of the industry.

In 2011, Guo Meimei, a 20-year-old girl who claimed to be the general manager of a company called Red Cross Commerce showed off her extravagant lifestyle on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. People were angered and begun to take a more serious look at the transparency budgets and expenditure in government departments, which led to growing exposure of government corruption and sex scandals.

But the most astounding event that highlights what some people say the decaying moral standards is the traffic accident in southern Guangdong province in which a two-year old girl was knocked down by a truck and died on the street. No passers-by offered her any assistance.

Since the reform and opening up campaign in the 1980s, people have become gradually divorced from an acquaintance-based society, changing the traditional form of interpersonal confidence, said Wang Junxiu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who authored the report,

“In this world, we are in desperate need of interpersonal confidence. It is really tiring to be wary of the strangers all the time, but there are too many traps that we may fall into,” said 毕加索的乖貓 on her Sina Weibo account.

“Sometimes I feel I am too innocent. I hoped that my family members could be nice and good, but they only cared about how much money they could make. Money estranged us from each other and we even became virtual enemies. I don’t want to see this happen, really” said user 尛尛-雲.

“It is too difficult to trust others today. It is not because I am not willing to, but because there are various frauds. I am already numb,” said 玻璃心-阳光.

By Xu Xinlei