I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust".

China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell

https://ourworldindata.org/corruption

https://ourworldindata.org/trust

> China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell

There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine:

- China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population.

- The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the perception of corruption.

- The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have, even if the poll is supposedly "confidential" and "only for scientific purposes".

We are probably meant to assume ceteris paribus and only vary the dimension of corruption.

I think you’re right that culture plays a key role. For example if small bribes are customary, that doesn’t erode trust, that’s just the way things are.