The social volcano thesis states that the rising inequality in China threatens regime stability. This idea, although widely held in the media and in academia, is backed by little positive evidence but by much negative evidence. Two primary pieces of negative evidence are that the Chinese people trust the central government and that they are highly tolerant of inequality. This paper discusses the shortcomings of the negative evidence and re-examines the thesis in a rigorous and direct way. Our multilevel analysis shows that provincial inequality has negative effects on individuals’ trust in the local government but not in the central government, and this negative effect holds for both the rich and the poor. Because distrust in the local government implies distrust in the central government, we conclude that a social volcano exists.
Objective
This study examines how the political context of socialization affects the political orientations of the younger generation in China.
Methods
Using four national surveys and multiple indicators of authoritarian orientation, this study compares Chinese generations with multilevel ordered logistic regression and linear regression.
Results
Our analysis shows that the younger generation, Xi generation, is more orientated toward authoritarianism than its preceding generations, while its previous generation, Hu generation, was not more authoritarian than its prior generations when the Hu generation was the youngest in the survey.
Conclusion
Against the influential modernization theory, which predicts young generations to be more critical of the status quo, we conclude that the younger generation in China is on the authoritarian side of the spectrum and this generational pattern is more likely to be caused by heightened authoritarianism in the political context of socialization than a life‐cycle effect.
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