<p>The remarkably high level of political trust observed in Chinese surveys has ignited enduring debates regarding whether fear has inflated these figures. However, opposing sides share one assumption: Fear and trust are inherently contradictory. Our study proposes an alternative view. Grounded in cognitive dissonance theory—which holds that induced compliance under certain conditions can foster sincere attitude change—we argue that political pressure has, in fact, increased political trust in China. We use Xi’s anti-corruption campaign as a quasi-natural experiment to test this theory. Using 2002–2021 survey data and employing a Difference-in-Differences model, we take the campaign as a treatment and regime insiders as the treated group, revealing that political trust increased faster among regime insiders than among outsiders during the campaign. This finding withstands various robustness checks, including preference falsification examinations. Our study not only addresses the fear-love conundrum in China studies but also uncovers a general mechanism of legitimacy production under deep authoritarianism.</p>