Science as Culture or Institution? Scientific Attitudes in China

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Trust, Mistrust, and Distrust

Abstract

The global diffusion of science has increasingly occurred through transnational professional and occupational networks, allowing scientific institutions to emerge within diverse political systems. China provides a compelling case of this dynamic, where scientific development has been shaped simultaneously by longstanding educational traditions that valorize knowledge and by a state-centered institutional framework operating outside democratic norms.
This paper investigates how cultural and institutional sources of confidence in science interact across generational cohorts in China. While cultural reverence for learning may support favorable attitudes toward science, the organizational embedding of science within state structures introduces an alternative basis of legitimacy grounded in institutional authority. Generational cohorts in China have experienced distinct political-economic environments, from high-authority socialist governance to market-oriented reforms and expanded individual autonomy, potentially producing variation in how science is understood and trusted.
Using World Values Survey data from China, I analyze cohort differences in confidence in science and their relationship to institutional trust and perceived personal freedom. Regression analyses show that confidence in science is strongly associated with confidence in state institutions, suggesting that scientific legitimacy is closely tied to institutional authority. At the same time, younger cohorts exhibit comparatively lower confidence in science, though perceptions of personal freedom partially offset this decline. These findings indicate that confidence in science in China reflects an institutionalized form of legitimacy shaped by state authority rather than a purely cultural orientation toward scientific norms.
By examining the co-development of scientific culture and institutional structures under authoritarian governance, this study contributes to institutional theory by illustrating how globally diffused professional institutions are locally adapted and legitimated within distinct political orders. More broadly, the findings highlight the importance of institutional–cultural alignment in shaping public orientations toward science and suggest that variations in this alignment may generate generationally patterned understandings of scientific authority.

Author

• Xiangyu Chen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee