Abstract: Although research on the influencing factors of corruption perception is relatively abundant, the impact of government governance performance and political trust on corruption perception is a topic seldom touched upon. This study uses CSS2019 survey data to empirically test the impact of government governance performance and political trust on perception of corruption. The analysis results show that the government governance performance and political trust have a significant negative impact on the perception of corruption in China, and the government governance performance has a stronger negative impact on the perception of corruption. Further mechanism analysis shows that political trust plays a mediating role between government governance performance and the perception of corruption of the Chinese people. It can be seen that the government should further improve its own governance performance and pay attention to social equity, so as to enhance the political trust of our people to reduce their perception of corruption.

Key words: government governance performance, political trust, perception of corruption, social equity