This original analysis of the World Values Survey waves of 2007, 2012 and 2018 reveals important relationships among political trust and satisfaction, happiness, views of corruption, local elections and activism from the last half of the Hu Jintao administration through the first five years of Xi Jinping's rule. These data shed new light on the deeper dynamics underlying the high and growing levels of trust in government documented in other studies. Among this report's more novel findings, we find increased trust in government coincides with decreased local electoral participation, suggesting that participation in local elections is not key to perceptions of regime legitimacy. Views of corruption and a sense of personal efficacy through non-institutionalized forms of political participation such as peaceful demonstrations appear more relevant. Thus, constraints on people's ability to engage in peaceful demonstrations are likely to negatively impact views of regime legitimacy. In addition, the report uncovers demographic variations in these dynamics, indicating that regime legitimacy is more precarious among citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy and among younger Chinese. Overall, these findings complicate existing explanations of regime legitimacy centring on economic performance, nationalism, responsiveness/adaptiveness and efforts to combat corruption.

文章中对 2007 年、2012 年和 2018 年“世界价值观调查”报告做了最新的分析，揭示了从胡锦涛执政后半期到习近平前五年的政治信任度、满意度、幸福感、对腐败的观点、地方选举和行动主义之间的重要关系。分析这些数据给中国民众对政府的高度和不断增长信任给出了更深层次的解释。报告中新的发现显示对政府的信任度增加与地方选举参与度的下降同时发生，这表明参与地方选举并不是了解政权合法性的关键。对腐败的看法和通过和平示威等非制度化的政治参与形式似乎更为相关。因此，限制参与和平示威可能会对政权合法性产生负面影响。此外，该报告发现期间经历的人口变化，政权合法化在社会经济等级最底层和年轻的群体中更加不稳定。总体而言，这些发现使现有的以经济绩效、民族主义、响应能力/适应性和打击腐败为中心的政权合法性解释更加复杂化。