How We've Surrendered So Much to Governments

We've surrendered so much to governments, even though we don't trust them. We seem to be losing our sense of direction and belief in ourselves. China has increased its defense spending by 800% since the mid nineties. They're behaving in a way reminiscent of past authoritarian regimes that have turned out to be very dangerous indeed. How can we understand these authoritarian regimes tat loosely go under the banner of communism? Thes a lot of valuable research around. And it's, i don't know how democracy continues to operate if we don’t trust one another or each other.