The problem of trust is becoming more and more complicated and social trust machine has become an urgent issue

For human society, trust is as essential as air. Without a minimum of trust, our lives can be difficult. When you buy food, the peddler who sells vegetables will never dare to pass it on to you. You may not be able to prove that the money thrown into the money basket is yours. When you fall, no one will dare to help you. Others can't be sure if you will pick him up. And trust can provide a more stable psychological expectation for this uncertainty in people's interaction and become an adhesive for the entire human society. However, trust is also a very risky thing. Before a rational person decides to trust another person, he must weigh the potential benefits and losses, weigh the weight, and consider how likely it is for the other party to lose faith.

At present, with the rapid economic and social development of our country, people’s ways of interaction have changed a lot, social relations have become increasingly diverse, and the phenomenon of fraud and swindle in interpersonal contacts and counterfeiting and shoddy in the market have brought about the trust between people. With huge challenges, the trust issue has become increasingly important and complicated. How to establish a trust mechanism that meets the needs of China's economic and social development has become a hot issue in the academic community.

The trust mechanism in our traditional society: trust due to familiarity

- China's traditional society is a rural society. It is an "acquaintance society" and a society with no strangers. In rural society, people trust because of their familiarity. This is a kind of "direct trust" and "personalized trust."

The traditional society in our country is mainly composed of villages. Villages composed of scores of people to hundreds of people have become the stage of production and life for villagers to live in and multiply for a long time. For this traditional society, sociologist Fei Xiaotong called it a rural society. In the rural society, people are confined to the land. The “familiarity” caused by local restrictions becomes an important feature of the rural society. He pointed out that the life of rural society is rich in locality. Locality refers to the geographical limits of people's activities, the less contact between different regions, the isolation of living, and the maintenance of isolated social circles. Rural society became a society born and died under the local restrictions. In other words, this is an "acquaintance society," a society with no strangers.

Fei Xiaotong pointed out that in rural society, people trust because of their familiarity. The credit of rural society is not the emphasis on the contract, but occurs in the reliability of the familiarity of the behavior of a behavior to the time without thinking. Because of the long-lasting interdependence of rural society and the close internal links, the benefits of people who fail to keep their promises are far less than the losses caused by his loss of trust. He may even be unwilling to establish a foothold in the village. It can be said that in the "acquaintance society", because everyone is familiar with each other, they naturally generate credit and rules. Few people will dare to undermine this kind of credit and rules. Otherwise, he will be severely punished by everyone. People in the “acquaintance society” experience trust relationships in this way, producing and reproducing such trust mechanisms that contain strong emotions. Because this kind of trust mechanism is directly and spontaneously generated due to familiarity, it is called "direct trust" or "personalized trust" by scholars.

Sociologist Max Weber called this trust mechanism in traditional Chinese society “special trust” to correspond to “universal trust” in Western society. He believes that the trust in traditional Chinese society is based on blood-based communities and is based on personal relationships and family or prospective family relationships. People only trust people who have personal relationships with them and do not trust others. There are also some scholars in China who use the “differential trust” to analyze the trust in traditional Chinese society. They believe that the trust mechanism in traditional Chinese society is not closed, and the generation of trust is not limited to blood and geographical relationships. In traditional societies, the social relations that each person uses at a certain time or place are like the ripples that are thrown out of a circle when a stone is thrown on the water. Among them, blood and geopolitical relations will determine the "waviness" in which people are in their own circle. Therefore, with “Yi” as the center, the trust relationship between oneself and others is also like the ripple of water. It is pushed out in a circle, and the more it pushes farther, the thinner it becomes. People determine whether or not a person is “owner” based on their affinity with others, and determine the level of trust. However, this "differential trust" is not rigid, and sometimes even very flexible and uncertain. People can use a variety of methods, such as recognizing their sons and worshipping their children, to further generalize, extend, and extend their consanguineous kinship and geographic relationships to those who have no blood or place with them.

Western Modern Society's Trust Mechanism: Institution Guarantees Trust

- In the modern western society, people's communication has transcended family and blood, and gradually formed a "Stranger Society." In the "Stranger Society", trust is mostly generated by contracts and is protected by law. It is called "indirect trust" and "institutional trust."

With the establishment of industrialization and market economy, Western society has advanced to modernization earlier than ours. After a long period of development, the trust mechanism of the western modern society has become more mature and has certain reference significance for the construction of the trust mechanism in developing countries.

Some scholars have pointed out that the unfamiliarization of the western modern society makes its trust mechanism appear as an “indirect trust”, that is, trust must have media participation. Due to the continuous development of industrialization, urbanization, marketization, globalization, and informatization, modern society has become more and more unfamiliar. In particular, western modern society is known as the "Stranger Society." In the "Stranger Society", on the one hand, people gather in large numbers and even form large cities with populations of more than 10,000. Under this kind of colonization, people cannot know each other thoroughly, and it is impossible to build trust on the basis of long-term understanding of character. On the other hand, with the development of the social division of labor, due to the needs of work and life, people and people have to produce various contacts and cooperation. The issue of trust has become extremely important. Therefore, in the interaction of the “Stranger Society”, people’s trust objects cannot include only those who are directly familiar with them, but must also include more extensive strangers. At this time, there must be an intermediary to form a “ Indirect trust." This intermediary can be an individual such as an expert, or it can be an organization such as a social organization. For example, experts can become a medium for people to trust various kinds of information in the “Stranger Society”, and expert opinion can become a kind of judgment standard.

Some scholars believe that the trust mechanism of the western modern society is not so much the "indirect trust" achieved by the two sides through the media, but rather the trust of both parties in the contract or the law, that is, "systematic trust." In western societies, the concept of contract is deeply rooted in people's minds, laws are effectively implemented, and contracts and laws act as a good medium of trust. Because both parties must reach a certain level of trust, we must first ensure that the other party's behavior is predictable, and secondly, we must ensure that if one party breaches the contract, it can effectively punish it. On the one hand, the contract or law restricts people's behavior to the extent permitted by law, so that both parties have certain expectations of each other; on the other hand, both parties are placed under the protection of the law and play a deterrent role for both parties. This ensures trust.

How to construct the trust mechanism of modern society in our country

——The social transformation has broken the trust mechanism in our traditional society, but the trust mechanism in modern society is still not perfect. To build the trust mechanism of modern society in China, it is necessary to draw lessons from the trust mechanism of the western modern society, and also to seek wisdom from the traditional Chinese social trust mechanism.

With the deepening of China’s reform and opening up and the development of the socialist market economy, especially the in-depth development of industrialization, urbanization, marketization, globalization, and informatization, our country’s society has stepped out of the traditional society and is in a transitional period. In this context of social transformation, the trust mechanism in traditional society has been broken, but the trust mechanism in modern society has not yet been perfected. At present, how to construct the trust mechanism of our modern society has become an urgent issue.

Some scholars believe that although the trust mechanism in our traditional society has been broken, it still plays a role in disguise in many aspects. Many people are still accustomed to using acquaintances to handle affairs while ignoring the role of laws and institutions. This has become the present state of our country. Obstacles to social development. This kind of trust mechanism based on acquaintances is very harmful. First of all, it is not based on the universalism principle that is needed in the "Stranger Society". In the long run, this is not conducive to the expansion of the trust relationship in the “Stranger Society”, and once “killing” becomes a common phenomenon, it may even trigger a larger crisis of social confidence. Second, it is not conducive to system construction and leads to corruption problems and nepotism. Afterwards, it is not conducive to the development of the socialist market economy. Therefore, some scholars believe that the key to constructing the trust mechanism of our modern society is to completely eliminate the negative influence of the traditional “acquaintance society” trust mechanism and build “systematic trust.” Because modern society is a highly institutionalized society, the institutional environment is an important living environment for everyone. Most of the social resources needed for the survival and development of social members are allocated to individuals according to the rules established by the system. In modern “stranger society”, as long as people establish trust in the system, they can establish trust in strangers. This requires that we must thoroughly implement the basic strategy of governing the country according to law. This is the long-term and basic countermeasure for constructing our modern social trust mechanism.

On the other hand, some scholars believe that China is currently in a period of social transformation and it is difficult for related legal systems to be perfected and effectively implemented in a short period of time. Therefore, the construction of China's modern social trust mechanism still needs the support of “personalized trust” in the traditional social trust mechanism, and it requires the restraint of moral strength. We can and should use the trust mechanism of modern Western society for reference, but we cannot follow it. Instead, we must follow the development path of Chinese society and develop its own "modernity" from its own "tradition." Moreover, with the diversification and complication of interpersonal relationships, contemporary human relationships in the West have also begun to change from a relatively rigid contractual relationship to an entrusted relationship with human relations. This is also an inspiration for the construction of the current Chinese trust mechanism. In the process of establishing a modern institutionalized trust mechanism, the traditional humanized trust mechanism can still play a role.

Some scholars have also discussed specific measures to build a modern social trust mechanism in China. For example, some scholars have suggested that a credit information disclosure mechanism should be established. Various entities of the social credit system such as the government, public utilities, financial institutions, trade associations, etc., shall be disclosed in various forms in the administration of protection in accordance with the requirements of relevant state laws and regulations on the premise of protecting state secrets, business secrets, and personal privacy. And credit information in business activities. Some scholars have suggested that the supply and demand mechanism for credit products should be nurtured. Credit service agencies use open credit information to process credit products, provide credit services, and provide credit market supply. The market players make rational decisions and avoid credit risks in market transactions by using credit products. Some scholars have suggested that a mechanism for credit punishment and praise should be formed. Through the media, it has strengthened the exposure of lawbreakers and the publicity of honesty and trustworthiness, and has increased the punishment for illegal violators through the law.

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