Generalized Trust, Not Nationalism, Shapes Chinese Views of Japan and South Korea

Why This Question Matters

Rising tensions in East Asia are often attributed to mutual distrust, but little systematic evidence exists on what drives ordinary citizens’ trust (or distrust) across borders and how that shapes support for interstate cooperation. Xiaojun Li, Jianwei Wang, and Dingding Chen tackle this gap by asking which beliefs and experiences explain Chinese urban residents’ trust in Japan and South Korea—and whether that trust translates into preferences for cooperation.

Four-City Survey of Urban Chinese Attitudes

The authors analyze an original four-city survey of Chinese urban residents that measures respondents’ attitudes toward Japan and South Korea. Key concepts are defined and measured: generalized trust (the belief that other nations have benign intentions), nationalism, and historical memory of past conflicts. The paper uses multivariate statistical models to estimate how these factors predict (1) trust in each country and (2) support for interstate cooperation, controlling for standard demographic and attitudinal covariates.

What the Analysis Shows

• Generalized trust emerges as the strongest and most consistent predictor of trust toward both Japan and South Korea: respondents who are more dispositionally trusting of other nations are more likely to express trust in these two countries.
• That generalized trust also predicts greater support for interstate cooperation, linking individual-level sentiments to foreign-policy preferences.
• Contrary to common expectations, measures of nationalism and historical memory have little or no independent effect on international trust in these models.
• The authors report these patterns across their survey sample and subject them to robustness checks to ensure the findings do not reflect simple demographic confounds.

Implications for Policy and Scholarship

These results suggest that efforts to improve China’s relations with Japan and South Korea might benefit from policies and social exchanges that build generalized trust—beyond managing elite narratives about history or mobilizing nationalist sentiment. For scholars, the study clarifies microfoundations of international trust by distinguishing generalized dispositions from country-specific historical attitudes.

The study by Xiaojun Li, Jianwei Wang, and Dingding Chen, published in International Studies Quarterly, advances understanding of how ordinary citizens’ dispositions shape interstate trust and cooperation in East Asia and offers concrete avenues for policy engagement in Sino–Japanese and Sino–Korean relations.