Can the good old days restore trust? : a study in US-China trust-building

Abstract

Can positive historical memory improve trust between states? Trust is a central variable in international politics, and negative historical memory, particularly memory of past aggressions, is one major obstacle in international trust-building. In China particularly, memory of national humiliation drives the Chinese suspicion of the West. I fielded a survey experiment in China to investigate whether positive historical memory may alleviate the Chinese mistrust, contributing to two areas of research. First, I provide a first set of experimental evidence on whether and how trust may be built at the international level. Recent research advances innovative theories on international trust-building, but these theories are largely untested. I put them to empirical tests. Second, I address a conceptual blind spot in historical memory research, spotlighting the role of positive historical memory in International Relations. Existing works tend to focus on negative historical memory, undertheorizing how positive historical memory may influence trust. Leveraging insights in social psychology, I investigate whether and how pro-self and pro-social benevolence memory improve trust among the Chinese citizens towards the United States. The pre-registered experiment showed positive historical memory in general could not build international trust effectively, but it could work under one condition — if the positive memory was able to strengthen the moral evaluation of potential partners, it may reliably improve trust. My research contributes a first set of experimental evidence on whether positive historical memory may build trust in China, and how.