Scottish Centre for China Research

Abstract: China has witnessed repeated public debates about a crisis of morality and trust in society. How widespread is this belief? What are its driving forces and consequences? In this paper I draw on a concept of social anomie as an individual perception of the state of society and develop a social anomie perception scale. I apply this scale in three original online surveys representative of the Chinese online population (2022, 2023 and 2024). Findings show that the perception of anomie is very widespread. It is not driven by low social status and it is negatively associated with domestic media consumption. However, it is substantially correlated with political, social and, to a lesser extent, economic disruption. Individuals with a stronger perception of anomie view the regime as less legitimate, identify less with the nation, have weaker particular social trust, and are more pessimistic. Yet, anomie perception is not associated with civic disengagement and, surprisingly, correlates positively with general social trust. In other words, the perception of social anomie in China is interrelated with political skepticism, lower patriotism, pessimism and a readiness to cooperate with unknown people. From the perspective of the Chinese leadership, this attitude is therefore a worrying phenomenon. This helps explain why the state is making efforts at combating it with its program of moral engineering.

Short Bio: H. Christoph Steinhardt is an associate professor and study program director in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna. He is PI of the European Research Council project ENIGINEERING. He is speaker of the Association for Social Science Research on China (ASC) under the German Association of Asian Studies. Steinhardt conducts research on state-society relations, surveillance, social trust, contentious politics, and political identities, primarily in Chinese-speaking societies. He previously held positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore. His research was published in disciplinary journals like Chinese Sociological Review, Political Studies, European Political Science Review, Social Indicators Research, or Mobilization, as well as area studies outlets such as China Quarterly, China Journal, Modern China, or Journal of Contemporary China. He has been funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the European Research Council.