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The Impact of Chinese-style Modernisation on the

Social-psychological Behaviours of Chinese
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Article in Psychology and Developing Societies · August 2023

DOI: 10.1177/09713336231180962

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Article

The Impact of Psychology and Developing Societies

[Link]
35(2) 324­–346, 2023
Chinese-style © 2023 Department of Psychology,
University of Allahabad
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DOI: 10.1177/09713336231180962
Behaviours of Chinese [Link]/home/pds
Individuals: Evidence
from Sociological and
Psychological Research

Jianxin Zhang1 and Na Zhao2

Abstract
As an important social transformation in China, Chinese-style
modernisation has driven China into the ranks of modernised countries
at a surprising speed for 40 years. From the perspectives of sociology
and social psychology, the present article reviews the grassroots social
governance model of Chinese-style modernisation and the changes in
the traditional culture that have deeply affected people’s minds and
social behaviour. The research findings indicate that Chinese-style
modernisation has created a miracle in macro-material production, but
at the grassroots level, while the material living standards of the people
are gradually improving, their social dignity and spiritual life cannot be
synchronised. First, as an indicator of measuring people’s quality of
life and social development level, Chinese people’s sense of happiness
declined in general, and the gap in happiness between different groups

1Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of

Sciences, Beijing, China
2School of Sociology and Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics,

Beijing, China

Corresponding author:
Jianxin Zhang, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
E-mail: zhangjx@[Link]
Zhang and Zhao 325

of Chinese people is widening. Second, the sense of fairness among

people in the modernisation process has decreased, leading to some
negative attitudes among the public and exacerbating social risks. Third,
the general level of trust among the Chinese people is declining, but
the specific trust manifests complex patterns, showing an increase in
calculated (benefit-based) trust and a decrease in identified (kinsfolk-
based) trust. In particular, people’s trust in the central government
has remained high; however, they do not have the same level of trust
in local and grassroots governments. All these demonstrate that the
authoritarian type of governance and the historical practice of spiritual
culture endorsed in Chinese-style modernisation have brought new
possibilities for human society in future development, but there are
also many problems and difficulties of dogmatism, formalism and
bureaucracy in grassroots governance and cultural compromises of the
East and the West. Chinese-style modernisation needs to do more in
order to further enhance the sense of gain, happiness and trust among
grassroots people, in addition to pursuing the aim of raising overall
strength of the country.

Keywords
Social transformation, Chinese-style moderation, Happiness, trust

Introduction
It is generally believed that the modernisation of a country is based on
industrialisation and scientific and technological innovation, and it
involves promoting the transformation of society from traditional to
modern in three aspects: material, institutional and spiritual-cultural
dimensions. Statistical data indicate that the majority of countries and
regions that have embarked on the path of modernisation or have
essentially completed their modernisation tasks adopt the Western-style
free market economic policies, the social governance strategy of ‘small
government, big society’, and a culture of rationalism and individualism.
Therefore, it is believed that to achieve modernisation in a country or
region, it is necessary to learn from the advanced West, not only to
transplant their economic systems that have been successfully practiced
for a century but also to simultaneously transplant their political
systems, social governance models and spiritual and cultural elements
(Gao, 2022).
326 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

China’s path to modernisation is actually a history of more than a

hundred years, during which it has repeatedly experienced fluctuations
in its acceptance of the notion that ‘modernisation is synonymous with
Westernisation’. After the overthrow of the last feudal dynasty, the Qing
government, the Nationalist government established by the Kuomintang
attempted to fully embrace the Western-style modernisation model.
However, for various historical reasons, this attempt at modernisation
did not truly bring China into the ranks of modernised nations. The
Communist Party of China (CPC) established the People’s Republic of
China in 1949 and extensively studied the economic development and
national governance models of the former Soviet Union. Although it also
proposed to ‘surpass Britain and catch up with the United States’ in the
economy and achieve the goal of modernisation, China’s economy, after
the Cultural Revolution, still lagged far behind the developed Western
countries in terms of scale and total output (Zuo, 2001).
In the 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party began to seriously reflect
and formulate the strategy of reform and opening up, which led China to
enter the second historical period of learning Western-style modernisation.
‘Reform’ means adopting successful Western economic management
models and stimulating the initiative of various economic entities.
‘Opening up’ means aligning with international trade rules and allowing
the smooth circulation of logistics, personnel and currency. After the
implementation of the ‘reform and opening up’ policy, the modernisation
process in China has been accelerated in all aspects, and it has continued
for 40 years, driving China into the ranks of modernised countries at a
surprising speed (Jiang & He, 2008).
Therefore, people in China are becoming more confident in widely
using ‘Chinese-style modernisation’ to describe and define everything
that is happening in China today, to indicate that the path of China’s
economy, politics, society and culture is different from and superior to
the Western capitalist path (Li, 2022). The process of Chinese-style
modernisation is considered an important social transformation in China,
surpassing conventional social changes, and having the implications of a
turning point in civilisation (Sun, 2007). It has brought three huge
changes to the Chinese people, as follows.
First, China has achieved unprecedented success in modernisation in
the material and economic domain. Since the reform and opening-up
policy, the productivity of Chinese society has increased significantly,
and various products for production and daily life have become
increasingly abundant. The overall level of material living standards for
Zhang and Zhao 327

the Chinese people has been significantly improved. For example, the
improvement in material living standards for the Chinese people has
gone through several significant stages of the ‘Four Big Things’
replacements. Each time the ‘Four Big Things’ are replaced, people’s
material living standards are greatly improved. The ‘Four Big Things’ of
the 1950s–1970s included the radio, bicycle, sewing machine and watch.
The ‘Four Big Things’ of the 1980s–1990s referred to the colour TV,
refrigerator, washing machine and tape recorder. Turning into the 21st
century, the ‘Four Big Things’ have been upgraded to include expensive
items, such as smartphones, computers, cars and houses. The symbolic
change of the ‘Four Big Things’ has allowed people to truly experience
a rich life brought by modernisation, thus increasingly supporting the
leadership of the CPC (Li, 2007).
Second, the CPC, as the most politically dominant force in China,
implements a governance model of ‘one unified strategy’ for the entire
country. In the field of institutional construction and social governance,
the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China explicitly stipulates
that the CPC is the highest political leadership in China. This institutional
design emphasises the importance of ‘concentrating resources and efforts
to accomplish great things’, and requires the government to actively
intervene, intervene and lead economic management and social
governance in order to maintain public interests and promote social
development. This governance model extends to all aspects of social life,
from urban communities to rural towns. In China, there is almost no
distinction between social governance at the national level and at the
grassroots level. From planning and budgeting to implementation and
evaluation, the government is responsible for all aspects of social affairs.
For example, in the economic sector, China’s modernisation adopts a
system design of ‘state-controlled capital’, with the state controlling the
majority of macro-economic activities that are crucial to the national
economy. Even at the micro-economic level, the state requires all
foreign-funded enterprises, joint ventures and large-scale private
enterprises to establish CPC organisations, such as party committees or
branch committees.
Third, the entire process of modernisation in China has presented a
distinct spiritual and cultural landscape different from that of the West.
Over the past century, Chinese intellectuals have often been divided into
various camps, such as the ‘national essence’ faction, the ‘Westernisation’
faction, and the ‘middle ground’ faction, in response to the widespread
Western culture. The ‘national essence’ faction advocates the revival of
328 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

traditional Chinese studies, seeking to find the ‘magic pill’ for self-
rescue by returning to ancient Chinese traditions. The ‘Westernisation’
faction advocates for China to fully accept the Western model of
modernisation in both its economic foundation and superstructure of
government and culture. The ‘middle ground’ faction leans towards the
idea of using Chinese studies as the foundation and Western studies as
the application. However, regardless of the faction, the social governance
model of ‘great unification’ that has been continued for over two
thousand years has consistently encouraged and strengthened the
collective culture of individuals being subordinate to family, clan and
country. This has deeply rooted in Chinese-style modernisation in values,
such as collectivism, universalism, benevolence and kindness. Moreover,
because these collectivistic values (such as patriotism and sacrificing
individual interests for the country) provide the CPC with continuous
and consistent psychological support for its governance strategy, they
have been widely promoted and educated in contemporary China, further
flourishing.
Although there are many similarities between Chinese-style and
Western-style modernisation in promoting material economic
development, the two aspects of modernisation, which deal with social
government systems and spiritual culture, exhibit great differences. For
example, Western political system design requires minimal intervention
by the government in the market and citizens’ lives, aiming to let market
entities and natural persons make decisions and self-manage in a way
that maximises their interests. Furthermore, in the development process
of Western modernisation, individualism and free-market capitalism are
a pair of inseparable twins. Individualism is both a cultural factor that
drives modernisation and a result that is constantly reinforced in the
modernisation process. Western culture, with individualism at its core,
promotes individual success and value realisation, pursuing a diverse set
of value orientations. However, in the process of Chinese-style
modernisation, the values, such as independence, autonomy and
individualism have obstacles and difficulties becoming mainstream in
contemporary Chinese culture (Wang & Hu, 2008).
As a final outcome of modernisation, no matter whether it is Chinese-
style or Western-style, it should manifest as the modernisation of people,
which inevitably involves complex psychological and behavioural
processes. The present article is aimed at exploring the effects of
grassroots social governance and traditional culture changes, brought
about by Chinese-style modernisation, on people’s feeling and behaviours
Zhang and Zhao 329

from the micro-perspective of sociology and social psychology, in

attempt of providing more evidence for the two differentiated modern
civilisations mentioned above.

The Findings from Sociological Survey

The rapid development of China’s modernisation has led to significant
changes in social stratification, and the problem of polarisation has
become increasingly prominent (Li, 1992). On 28 May 2020, during the
press conference of the Third Session of the Thirteenth National People’s
Congress, former Premier Li Keqiang pointed out that there are ‘600
million people with a middle to low income or below, whose average
monthly income is around 1,000 yuan’. Due to the increasing
concentration of social resources among a minority group, the gap
between the upper and lower classes of society continues to widen, and
the size of the lower class continues to increase. The growing tension
between the two has led to social fragmentation (Lu, 2003, 2010). The
upper class is responsible for formulating rules for resource allocation,
whereas the lower class is only responsible for contributing labour and
creating survival resources. The solidified social stratification makes it
increasingly difficult to coordinate the needs of different interest groups.
In the absence of a sound social governance system, the lower class may
feel relatively deprived.
Therefore, grassroots social governance should be a key issue to be
addressed when we look at the Chinese style of modernisation. Because
the grassroots social governance process still retains a strong element of
the ‘rule of man’, where grassroots managers mainly follow the
instructions of superior leaders rather than established legal provisions
and the demand of lower-class people, although China has made it
obvious progress in legal construction at the national governance level.
Multiple sociological surveys have discovered unsatisfactory grassroots
social governance models in various fields, including grassroots
administration and government regulation in townships and urban
communities.
According to Yang Hua’s (2021) book ‘Modernisation of County
Governance in China’s Rural Areas’, the grassroots model of social
governance is too rigid, making it difficult to mobilise the initiative of
the masses. The governance model adopts the pattern of the Communist
Party's leadership in everything, and the superiors treat the managed
330 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

masses as ‘giant babies’ in need of service, while grassroots administrative

staff considers themselves as the people’s ‘nannies’, which is in some
way quite similar to what is called ‘helicopter parents’ (Li, 2023). They
often complete tasks according to the intentions and instructions of their
superiors, strictly following the prescribed timeline and indicators,
unable to exceed the ‘red line’ and ‘bottom line’ set by higher authorities.
In the governance process, a one-size-fits-all approach is often used for
social governance. They take charge of all management and service
matters regardless of their importance but often ignore the current needs
of the people. As a result, the grassroots administrative staff is busy, but
the masses do not know what they are busy with, sometimes feeling
disturbed by grassroots officials without any sense of being served.
Many people have developed a habit of relying on handouts, believing
that any official social governance action must bring practical benefits to
themselves, such as money or gifts. Without material benefits, the masses
are not willing to cooperate actively, resulting in the difficulty of
implementing effective grassroots management.
A survey reports that China has a large population of low-income
groups, and social competition is fierce in various industries. Thus,
overtime work is a serious problem for those people working in
enterprises and institutions. The so-called ‘996 work system’ has become
a headache for young Chinese employees in recent years, who have to
work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. In state-owned enterprises and
institutions in China, employees are also frequently required to work
overtime, which is often due to bureaucratic formalism and numerous
meetings, reporting and approval processes that take up much of their
work time. As a result, employees are often forced to complete their
normal work through overtime. In addition, the lack of transparency in
the reward and promotion mechanisms within these organisations has
led to significant discontent among employees. The problem of excessive
overtime is not simply a labour-capital dispute, but a long-term issue that
affects the personal, corporate and social development of all three parties,
and is also a core issue in social governance in grassroots organisations
(Nie & Feng, 2020).
When coming to the rural areas under China’s modernisation, people
found a phenomenon of dislocation or even interruption of traditional
culture (Lv, 2023). In traditional Chinese villages, the purpose of farmers
is to carry on the family line and bring honour to their ancestors. The
belief that ‘filial piety is the most important virtue, and having no
descendants is the greatest sorrow’ has led farmers to focus their entire
Zhang and Zhao 331

lives on having children and fulfilling their duties, deriving meaning and
purpose from this pursuit and considering all the hardships worthwhile.
However, in contemporary rural areas, people tend to engage in short-
term, impatient behaviour, striving to become rich quickly, which has led
to intense competition and social conflict in villages. Young farmers in
China’s rural areas often leave their hometowns and migrate to cities for
work, whereas the elderly who remain in the villages live in loneliness
without family support and are prone to suicide now and then. Farmers
lack the stable connections that come from mutual expectations and
cooperation, which they once relied on, and they are unable to produce a
high-quality life from their leisure time. Instead, they have developed
various vulgar habits that harm their physical and mental health. For
example, about one-quarter of farmers’ income is spent on social
expenses, which has led to an increase in the number of banquets and the
cost of social obligations, and gambling is also widespread in rural areas
(Lv, 2023).
According to the sociological survey results mentioned above,
although Chinese-style modernisation has created many wonders of
success at the macro level of material production, which has attracted
worldwide attention, there are still many unsatisfactory aspects in micro-
level social governance and spiritual and cultural construction, leaving a
great room for improvement of grassroots governance. Perhaps it is at
this grassroots level that the social governance model formed by Western
modernisation is worth learning from. The Western grassroots governance
model often adopts a decentralised system, assigning government
functions to different departments and social organisations, making
social governance more flexible, targeted and effective. They particularly
emphasise encouraging citizen participation in the social governance
process, requiring and supervising government management departments
to improve decision-making transparency and credibility to ensure
higher quality social services. In addition, in Western grassroots social
governance, making full use of market mechanisms and the initiative of
various institutions and capital is stimulated to inspire social innovation
vitality, bring satisfaction to individuals and promote the overall
development of the community.
In short, Chinese-style modernisation and Western-style modernisation
exhibit quite a large difference, not only in the institutional level of
national governance and cultural endorsement, but also in the grassroots
governance. The official Chinese media also acknowledges that in the
process of China’s social governance, there is still a large amount of
332 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

dogmatism, formalism and bureaucracy, and these problems are more

prominent in grassroots social governance, which largely hinders the
ability of Chinese-style modernisation to meet the diverse, multi-level,
and multi-faceted spiritual and cultural needs of the people (People
Daily, 2022). Although people living at the grassroots level have
gradually improved their material living standards, they still find it
difficult to feel the satisfaction of social dignity and rich spiritual life at
the same pace. Therefore, Chinese-style modernisation faces an
important challenge, which is to not only rapidly enhancing the overall
strength of the country but also brings a sense of achievement, happiness
and trust to the grassroots people, thus achieving human modernisation
comprehensively in China.
Recently, a third-tier city, Zibo City, located in Shandong Province,
China has become famous throughout China for its barbecue and
grassroots government management model (People’s Daily, 2023). The
city has attracted many visitors from all over the country to come to
enjoy the food and free atmosphere, and many other city managers come
to learn the new experience of grassroots governance. The city of Zibo
was originally an industrial city, but due to its products not being
competitive, the city’s overall competitiveness has gradually declined.
The city managers capitalised smartly on the opportunity of hundreds of
university students being arranged to escape the epidemic. They provided
warm care for those students. When they left, the city government invited
them to eat Zibo barbecue for free and promised to have them eat Zibo
barbecue again when they came back to Zibo. Moved by the experience,
the students widely publicised it on social media, and as a result, Zibo
became popular all over China. Seizing this opportunity, the city
government has innovated more boldly in its management model, such
as opening the parking lot and toilets of the government courtyard to
tourists and citizens, offering free car parking within the city, not raising
prices for public services during holidays, and dismissing the team of
so-called ‘city urban inspectors’. The city’s managerial behaviour is no
longer strictly and rigidly adhering to superior documents, nor is it
shouting various big, empty and meaningless words, but rather starting
from and implementing whether citizens and tourists have a sense of
achievement, security and satisfaction. After 3 years of strict home
control during the period of the epidemic, people have seen a new and
hopeful change in grassroots social governance, in the example of Zibo
city.
Zhang and Zhao 333

The Findings from Research of Social Psychology

According to Tian (2013) and Yu (2004), one of the significant
transformations in Chinese society during the modernisation process is
the urbanisation and townification of its large population. However,
compared to the Western urbanisation process, China’s urbanisation and
townification have some specific characteristics (Li et al., 2012), such as
exacerbating the scarcity of land resources, causing severe environmental
damage (He & Zhou, 2013; Wu & Shao, 2015), and resulting in many
farmers losing their land and becoming a floating population in towns
and cities, thus expanding the number of low-income people in the urban
areas (Zhang & Jiao, 2016). In the first-tier cities of China, many
working-class people, especially those who have newly immigrated
from small cities or the countryside, have become ‘house slaves’ when
they try to settle down in the city by possessing their own houses. They
have to take a loan of a large amount of money to buy the house, and then
to repay the principal and interest to the bank for decades or years.
Consequently, all of these have led to a significant gap between the rich
and the poor in society, which has resulted in negative social attitudes
among the low-income population, reducing their sense of social fairness
and exacerbating their anxiety about the future in the era of change
(Grossmann & Na, 2014; Zhou, 2014). The extensive anxiety experienced
by the low-income population has led to a decrease in their happiness,
and the reduced perception of fairness has resulted in a greater belief in
injustice (Grossmann & Na, 2014; Zhou, 2014).
Happiness is a critical metric for gauging the level of social
development and quality of life. It enables individuals to relish and
adjust to life’s vicissitudes. In essence, people’s happiness is progressively
contingent on the availability of abundant material resources worldwide.
This phenomenon is also evident among the Chinese population, as they
tend to experience greater happiness when they possess expensive and
fashionable ‘The four big pieces’. Nonetheless, it is important to
acknowledge that happiness is not solely determined by material
affluence but rather by numerous nonmaterial factors, including social
equity and personal dignity, which individuals perceive and acquire,
particularly through the conduct of local and grassroots governance.
Several large-scale surveys being conducted recently have analysed
the degree of happiness of Chinese people, from whom the data were
recorded and collected between the 1990s and the early 21st century. The
results indicate that (a) there has been a significant decline in the level of
334 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

happiness among Chinese individuals (Brockmann et al., 2019). (b)

There has been a U-shaped change in satisfaction levels between 1990
and 2007, with a rebounding point in 2000, according to the updated
World Values Survey data (Clark et al., 2019; Steele & Lynch, 2013). (c)
The happiness level of Chinese people has shown a significant upward
trend from 2013 to 2017, based on the Chinese Household Finance
Survey (Clark et al., 2019). However, when the data from 2003 to 2015
were broken down further into different groups of people to be analysed,
a significant gap in this happiness trend emerged.
1. The upward trend was only found among older individuals,
whereas younger people showed a clear decline in their happiness.
Elder people tend to look back and compare the current experience
to the past one, thus feeling much improvement in their life
quality; whereas young people want to look forward and compare
their own status with that of high-class people, thus feeling more
unfair and hopeless (Yang et al., 2019).
2. People who strongly endorse traditional Chinese values and have
difficulty adapting to the rise of individualistic values have
experienced greater unhappiness (Wu et al., 2018), whereas those
who have already adapted well to individualistic values
experience an increase in happiness during the modernisation
process in China (Steele & Lynch, 2013).
3. Particularly and interestingly, when party members and non-
party members are compared, party members seem to experience
a greater drop than non-party members in their feeling of
happiness after the implementation of the policy of ‘reforming
and opening up’ (Zhang, 2020). It could be explained that since
the policy implementation in China, many party members
working in grass-roots governments have become no longer
powerful and enviable, because non-party members could
achieve the same or even higher social status through other ways,
such as making more money by doing their own business rather
than becoming an official and public servant of government.
In general, various researches has suggested that rising feelings of
insecurity, unhappiness and deprivation among individuals may be
attributed to problems, such as unemployment, income inequality and
social injustice (Easterlin et al., 2012; Wang Hongliang & Tu Yafu,
2016). Social justice is a fundamental ideal that has been pursued by
humans throughout history (Sabbagh & Schmitt, 2016), and is a core
Zhang and Zhao 335

value concept that runs through Chinese-style modernisation (Guo et al.,

2017). The perception of social justice directly influences the behaviour
of individuals, such as trusting behaviours (Johnson et al., 2016). Social
justice plays a critical role as a prerequisite for individuals to develop
trust and cooperative behaviour (Zhang et al., 2017).
Besides the survey and data mining studies, social psychologists
have also utilised experimental and statistical methods to look at the
relationship between social justice and various psychological and
behavioural variables. For example, Zhang et al. (2017) employed the
ultimatum game as a manipulation of social justice and discovered a
dual-path model in which distributive justice affects public cooperation
through instrumental trust, while procedural justice affects public
cooperation intention through motivational trust. Zhao et al. (2022)
conducted a meta-analysis of the China National Knowledge
Infrastructure and Wanfang databases, in which the keywords, such as
‘fairness’, ‘trust’, ‘trust tendency’, and ‘interpersonal trust’ were
searched and analysed. The results indicated that fairness perception
has significant main effects on various types of trust. Specifically,
fairness perception is significantly positively correlated with general
trust (r = 0.55), specific trust (r = 0.53), and institutional trust (r = 0.48,
p < .01). A further comparison between the high and low social classes
revealed that people from the lower social class have lower level of trust
than those from the higher social class (Tan, 2016; Guo et al., 2015),
they tend to hold negative attitudes towards the situation of social
justice and social fairness in China (CGSS data analysis; Sun, 2014).
The explanation of these findings is given that the diversity of cultural
values and poor grassroots social governance play important roles in
shaping the perception of fairness among Chinese people (Guo &
Giacobbe-Miller, 2015; Li et al., 2023). Even among high-income people
and various professionals, perception and trust were found to be more
closely related (Zhao et al., 2022). It means that social trust appears to
decrease in both high and low social classes due to the sense of unfairness,
and this trend may introduce potential social tension and risks during the
process of social transformation. It is believed that less trust in low-
social class people is due to perceptions of unfair treatment and
undignified status in their social life; while less trust in people with high
income and more professional knowledge is mainly attributed to their
demand for more freedom and self-determination in their working
environment.
336 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

Economist Easterlin (Easterlin et al. 2010) has found that income and
wealth do not increase happiness after a certain income level, and he
later on revised the. model and suggested a U-shaped pattern of the
association between economic development and SWB. However, the
findings in China partly support his theory, that is the U-shaped model
but not the previous one was confirmed. The study using the 2003–2010
Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) showed, despite heightened
inflation (as indicted by CPI), the association between individual
absolute income and SWB has always been positive, there was no flat
point in any period of this trend (Liu et al., 2012). While some other
studies suggested that the SWB of Chinese residents had started
increasing slowly after a decrease throughout the 1990 and hitting the
bottom in 2000–2005 (Li & Shi, 2019).
Trust can be further classified into two types: general trust and specific
(target-oriented trust) (Zhang, 1999). General trust refers to trust towards
people in general, including both acquaintances and strangers. It is
considered an important psychological resource for maintaining
interpersonal relationships and the smooth functioning of society in
modern society (Welzel & Delhey, 2015). Specific trust, on the other
hand, includes both ‘trust based on kinship’ and calculative ‘trust based
on mutual benefit’ (Jing et al., 2019). Chinese tend to exhibit higher
levels of trust towards their family members as well as acquaintances
and friends and adjust their trusting behaviours depending on specific
social situations. Specific trust plays a more significant role in Chinese
society just because of the collectivistic nature of Chinese culture,
wherein in-group and out-group target persons are clearly distinguished.
The general trust level of Chinese people was once shown to be
relatively high, in comparison to that of Nordic countries, such as the
Netherlands and Denmark (Medrano, 2015). However, recent research
suggests that Chinese society is currently experiencing a decline in
general trust. The ‘Chinese Social Attitudes Survey Report (2012–2013)’
reported that ‘the trust level of urban residents in China is decreasing’ in
major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai (Wang & Yang, 2013). A meta-
analysis of longitudinal data also supports this finding (Xin & Xin, 2017).
For instance, using cross-sectional historical meta-analysis, some
researchers discovered that the level of interpersonal trust among
university students declined significantly over a 10-year period from
1998 to 2009, and an analysis of data extracted from China’s CGSS
(2010–2013) demonstrated that the general trust of Chinese residents in
Zhang and Zhao 337

2013 was significantly lower than in 2010 (Xin & Zhou, 2012; Zhang &
Xin, 2019).
As previously stated, due to the increasing emphasis on material
comforts and the development of Chinese-style modernisation, general
trust among Chinese people has decreased while calculative trust has
increased. Psychological studies, using experimental paradigms, have
provided supporting findings for this observation, showing that levels of
benefit-oriented (i.e., calculative) trust have increased, even in
comparison to that of kinship-based trust (Zhao et al., 2019).
Numerous explanations have been offered for the decline in general
trust among Chinese individuals. Some scholars attribute this decline to
the influence of Western marketing ideas, as the marketing system
promotes competition rather than altruism (Xin, 2019). Additionally,
factors such as the lack of a credit system in Chinese society (Liu & Xin,
2011), high-income inequality (Zhang & Xin, 2019), and inadequate
grassroots governance (Xin, 2016) also contribute to the issue of trust.
As mentioned in the rural case study above, the breakdown of
interpersonal relationships among acquaintances due to residential
mobility is also a significant factor in the decline of general trust (Zhao
et al., 2021).
One of the most noteworthy findings regarding target-specific trust
pertains to individuals’ willingness to express trust in government bodies
at different rank levels. The results from several surveys consistently
indicate that the Chinese have the highest trust in the central government
while expressing a relatively low level of trust towards local and
grassroots governments (Lu et al., 2016). These findings suggest that
Chinese-style modernisation could be fully understood if the central
government and the local (including grassroots) governments had taken
a separate examination. The central government is the most powerful
administrative body in China because it controls all political, economic,
human resources and other resources, while the local government is less
powerful in political and human resources, and the grassroots government
then totally depends on governments of higher levels. Therefore, when
talking about Chinese style modernisation, we, of course should
recognise the great achievement in material production and social system
construction; however, we need to pay much greater attention to
operation and manipulation of grassroots governance, which has a
significant and direct impact on the behaviours of Chinese people,
particularly those in lower socioeconomic classes.
338 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

The research findings above from both sociology and social

psychology support each other in highlighting that although Chinese-
style modernisation has showcased a unique style of social governance
and cultural transformation, which differs in many aspects significantly
from Western-style modernisation, it is still an ongoing process that
needs more careful exploration, adjustment and improvement because it
appears to have many problems and difficulties in the following domains
of how to free grassroots governance to let them make the decision of
their own on local people’s specific needs and interests, and of how to
create a lenient atmosphere and culture in future to offer and to secure
people’s material satisfaction as well as their immaterial and psychological
enrichment. Of course, the Chinese central government has long been
aware of the problems. They have recently required and ordered
grassroots governments to focus more on providing people with products
and services according to their current needs, but not on those services
that look only gorgeous and flashy on the surface (Lin, 2023).

General Conclusion
Chinese-style modernisation has become one of the important topics
internationally today. American scholar Fukuyama (1992) once proposed
in his book The End of History and the Last Man that the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe demonstrated the failure of communism,
and the only path for human historical development was liberalism, with
its freedom and the democratic system as the ultimate goal of human
ideology. In the view of western scholars, modernisation is understood
as the transition from a traditional agricultural society to a modern
industrial society, which includes a series of aspects, such as
secularisation, industrialisation, commodification, urbanisation,
rationalisation, among others (Lin, 2008). They believe that countries
around the world will experience a development trajectory similar to that
of the West when they try to pursue modernisation. Therefore, people
around the world are eager to see whether Chinese-style modernisation
can break the ‘end of history’ prophecy and whether it can develop a
socialist modernisation path led by the CCP.
However, the success of modernisation in the material domain has
made the Chinese believe that the advantage of ‘concentrating resources
to do big things’ of nationalism and great unification governance in
China can innovate a new model, which can bring an alternative way for
Zhang and Zhao 339

people around the world to actualise modernisation in their own

countries. As social and economic progress advances, people, especially
many scholars, from East Asia and Latin America gradually realise that
there is no single form of modernisation, and the paths and outcomes of
modernisation can be very different in different countries due to their
different histories, religions, geographies and other factors. In other
words, there is not a unique modernity. Modernisation does not have to
be equivalent to westernisation, and the endpoint of modernisation does
not be either European or American societies.
More evidence indicates that the western style modernisation of the
liberal democratic system is not that perfect to be copied by everyone
everywhere. For example, a social survey in the US national election
showed that social trust in American society has declined significantly,
too. In the early 1970s, about half of the respondents said they believed
in the opinion of the majority, but today that number is less than a third
(Vallier, 2003). In an article published in the New York Times, Friedman
points out that Western social governance encountered an unprecedented
crisis in fighting COVID-19 pandemic especially. Ansell (2023) sums up
that there are five traps showing powerless social governance in
democratic Western countries: (a) everyone wants to be their own boss
and pursue democracy, but not everything can achieve ‘the common will
of the people’; (b) everyone wants equality, but is unwilling to give up
personal wealth to help low-income people; (c) everyone wants unity,
but is unwilling to compromise to cooperate with others; (d) everyone
wants security, but is unwilling to have their freedom restricted and (e)
everyone wants prosperity, but everyone is more concerned about how to
get rich quickly, and no one is patient enough to consider long-term
benefits. Such a modernisation may result in a fact, for example, that in
the United States, when a black president was elected, there was no
appropriate way to change the living conditions of the majority of black
people (Leovy, 2023; Whyte, 1993).
It has been proposed in theories of sociology and psychology to describe
and explain the differences between eastern and western modernisation in
terms of social systems and cultural tradition. Of course, these theories often
demonstrate the opinions in mutually contentious, or even contradictory
ways (Lin, 2008). Since the present article focusses on the two aspects,
grassroots governance and cultural transformation, of modernisation, three
topics of the theoretical debates are depicted in brief herewith to help us see
how scholars may explain the findings, being elaborated in the present
article, on comparison of Chinese style and the western style modernisation.
340 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

On Social Governance
Some theorists argue that the development of the Western modern
economic foundation is intertwined with its political, social and cultural
systems. The Chinese governance-based socialist system and traditional
culture, which does not correspond well with the modern economic
foundation, should be reformed and reconstructed. Otherwise, the
dislocation between political governance and free market operations will
ultimately lead to the instability of the economic foundation. Therefore,
China should not only learn about the capitalist economic system but
also the social governance system of ‘small government, big society’
from the West, and needs to strongly encourage rational competition and
an individualistic culture of democracy and freedom (Li, 2010).
In contrast, many Chinese scholars believe that since China is a
populous country, and its economic development is still highly
unbalanced, it would inevitably cause instability in Chinese social
organisations and confusion of spiritual culture, if the Western ideas and
methods of modernisation were completely copied in China. Therefore,
it is necessary to develop the economy comprehensively and coordinately
with an unshakeable mind to keep and maintain the stability of political
governance. Nationalism is undoubtedly a unique way of Chinese
modernisation (Cai, 2021). The state should have an unshakable core
position in various areas of social life, which can resist the infiltration
and interference of widely differentiated private interests into the
political process. In this process, individual and group interests must
obey the state’s interests, strategies and will. To achieve the country’s
future development, it is necessary and worthwhile to sacrifice individual
and small group interests in the short term.

On Implementation of Social Governance

Some scholars believe that the Chinese central government should have the
power to provide legislative, policy and planning safeguards for grassroots
people. In order to do this, the central government needs to control most
resources and take necessary measures to implement social governance in
all social institutions, such as grassroots governments, public service
agencies and city-village community offices. Implementation of social
governance is so exhaustive and thoroughgoing that any attempt at making
compromise and elasticity is not allowed and tolerated in China, so the
central government’s intention and planning social governance and social
Zhang and Zhao 341

services can be seen and felt in every aspect of social life, such as
employment and entrepreneurship, housing and settlement, medical
security, children’s education, health and elderly care. Ordinary people are
duty-bound to understand the country’s overall policies and to act and
perform in a way to be consistent with the demands and instructions of the
party and the central government. In return, they should be made feel cared
for and warm by the party and government, like being cared for and
attended by their parents. However, this great unification model of social
governance has encountered different opinions.
Opponents argue that the government is too strong in the process of
social governance, which will lead to the loss of vitality of various social
organisations. Because of the widespread and solid implementation of
central authority, it will largely restrict the freedom of grassroots social
organisations and the public. From the point view of long-term
development, the loss of freedom will eventually harm the overall
interests of individuals and society. Although the grand narrative and the
practice at the national level of Chinese-style modernisation have indeed
brought a new possibility for the future development of the world, the
problems of social governance at the grassroots level of social governance
act out to hinder to a large extent the ability of Chinese-style modernisation
to meet the diverse, multi-level, and multi-dimensional spiritual and
cultural needs of the people. It makes ordinary people feel unsatisfied
with their social dignity and rich spiritual life, although their material
living standard is indeed gradually and obviously improved.

On Cultural Differences
Chinese culture is believed to be different from the West in that it is
basically a non-religious, secular society with a centralised authoritarian
government throughout its long history. As Western modernisation
expands globally, it brings individualism and democratic ideas to
societies with low individualism and high collectivism, resulting in
conflicts and opposition between foreign and local cultures, and even
causing delays or interruptions in the modernisation process in non-
Western countries. Therefore, some scholars strongly support the opinion
that the traditional culture of collectivism and the political system of
authoritarianism have positive rather than negative impacts on Chinese
style modernisation, they think that the Western modernisation of
capitalism from the very beginning is just a form of ‘seeing objects but
342 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2)

not seeing people’, which alienates individuals into ‘one-dimensional

people’. Although Western individuals have become relatively wealthy,
their spiritual world is empty, and their moral values are depraved,
leading to a scene of instrumental rationality expansion and a lack of
value in the entire society.
On the contrary, other people believe that since the western culture is
centred around individualism, values personal success and self-
realisation, advocates for freedom, democracy and equality, it is very
beneficial for modernisation practices, which emphasise a lot on
technical rationality, equivalent exchange and efficiency consciousness
in material life as well as in the life of the spirit, especially helpful in
achieving the purpose of human modernisation.
Of course, there are some scholars who use the concept of multiple
modernities (Eisenstadt, 2000; Lee, 2013) in an attempt to comprise the
above conflict theories. These researchers proposed such theories as the
‘shock-response’ theory and the ‘traditional-modern’ theory, advocating
the coordination between the ‘state-society’ relationships. Some other
theories, such as the infiltration theory and the transformation theory
(Zhou, 2010) have tried to help people understand Chinese-style
modernisation by spelling out the relationship between the central social
governance and grassroots governance in China against the background
of comparing Chinese culture and Western culture.
In sum, the success of modernisation of China has indeed brought
about a new possibility for the future development of the world, which
protrudes the efficiency of the central governance model and the grand
narrative and historical practice of Chinese traditional culture. However,
even Chinese official media have acknowledged that there are still many
problems in social governance, particularly at the grassroots social
governance practice, and such problems and difficulties can also be seen
in the restoration of traditional culture and promotion of reconciling
collectivistic and individualistic cultures. All of these problems have
greatly weakened the ability of Chinese-style modernisation to meet the
diverse, multi-level and multi-faceted spiritual and cultural needs of the
people. Although the people living at the grassroots level have gradually
improved their material living standards, they find it difficult to feel the
satisfaction of social dignity and the richness of spiritual life synchronously.
Therefore, Chinese-style modernisation is still confronting an important
challenge—it needs not only to rapidly enhance the overall strength of the
country, but also needs to bring all grassroots people a sense of
Zhang and Zhao 343

achievement, happiness and trust in order to achieve comprehensive

human modernisation in China.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article.

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