Chinese social value change and its relevant factors: an age-period-cohort effect analysis

Using data from the World Values Survey (1990–2012), this article attempts to describe and analyze the changing trends in public values during social transformations in China. It is found that public attitudes toward authority tend to be increasingly favorable over time, values in the private sphere tend to be more open, while postmaterialist values show a trend of first rising and then falling. The most salient feature of the cohort effect is that the generations born after the reform and opening-up in 1978 identify more closely with the value of respect for authority, while their recognition of postmaterialist values tends to decline. The change in values is related to China's modernization process, global cultural diffusion, and important historical events and is also deeply influenced by the two-way interaction between tradition and modernity.