你依然信任着身边的一切吗?

染色的馒头，剽窃的论文，以及拿着假文凭的CEO都让中国人之间的信任度跌到低谷。近日，中国青年报社会调查中心就对中国的信任危机做了一项民意调查。

When asked whether they trust people around them, eight out of ten gave us the answer, no. Wang Congcong is an editor at the Social Survey Center for the China Youth Daily.

She uses a story about how one of her colleagues almost failed a class in college because they entrusted them to turn in a paper to illustrate the reasons behind their survey.

"We discussed the lack of trust in today's society. It's common that many patients feel their surgery operation will be successful only when they give extra money to please the surgeon. On top of that, you must examine a package from the courier before signing and accepting it. So, we did out this survey to see where mutual trust stands in China."

The survey was carried out on 6,744 Chinese netizens. When looking at the results of how people think of mutual trust, Wang Congcong says they weren't surprised.

"About 82 percent of respondents feel the level of trust is rather low. More than half of the respondents think the level is extremely low."

Going by these numbers, it seems there are very few trustworthy people. So who can we trust?

"About 70 percent of the respondents think mutual trust is very high with family members, and then comes their spouses with less than 55 percent. About one third think that their friends are trustworthy. The most unreliable relationships are between business partners as well as between doctors and patients with less than 10 percent in favor. It's quite unexpected for us to find such a low level of trust between doctors and patients."

Some say that developed countries have higher mutual trust, so it must be related to economic development. However, philosophy professor Li Huqun from the China University of Political Science and Law disagrees.

"The economic gap between China and those developed countries is small now. And you can find that people in the less prosperous central and western part of China enjoy a better trust level than those in the well-developed eastern part."

Professor Li says there are remote and proximate causes to the trust crisis.

"The remote cause is the erosion of Chinese traditional culture. Traditional Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism always put great emphasis on trust between people. The erosion of these values began about 100 years ago. The proximate cause is people's pursuit of economic profit. Since China reformed its economy, the country has been focusing on economic construction, and has closed its eyes to the soft power of traditional culture."

Professor Li says the country must start to enhance its cultural development now; otherwise the trust between people will eventually be lost.

For CRI, I'm Wang Wei.