Lead

A new Pew Research Center survey has found that global public opinion has shifted in favour of China over the United States for the first time in the two decades the centre has tracked such attitudes. Respondents in 25 of the 36 countries surveyed expressed more favourable views of China than of the US, according to the report released Wednesday.

The same survey found that in 22 of those 36 countries and territories, views of Chinese leader Xi Jinping were also more favourable than those of US President Donald Trump, including in Canada, Mexico, and major European powers such as France, Germany and the UK. However, researchers noted that people in many countries have low confidence in both leaders.

Coverage Comparison

The shift marks a notable reversal in global perceptions. Laura Silver, associate director of Pew's Global Attitudes Research and one of the study's researchers, said it was the first time in roughly 20 years of tracking that China has been viewed more positively than the US. Views of Beijing and Washington have been similar at some points in the past, she said, but have not been significantly more favourable for China until now.

Jonathan Schulman, a research associate at Pew, told the BBC that the centre has seen previous dips in positive views of the US — in 2008, at the end of George W. Bush's administration, and in 2017, at the start of Trump's first term — but even then, favourable views of China tended to be on par or slightly lower.

Spain, Indonesia, Italy, Greece and Canada were among the countries that saw the biggest swings towards China. Positive views of China reached record highs in some places surveyed this year, including Italy, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Turkey.

Key Claims

  • In 25 of the 36 surveyed countries, more people had favourable views of China than of the US, marking the first time Pew has seen such a result in so many countries since it began tracking global sentiments in 2002, as reported by BBC.
  • Only six countries — Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan and Israel — still favour the US more, according to findings reported by BBC, The Guardian and France 24.
  • Views of Xi Jinping were more favourable than those of Trump in 22 of the 36 countries and territories surveyed, a figure reported by France 24 and The Guardian.
  • The poll was conducted from February to May, a period when the US and Israel were engaged in a war against Iran, as reported by France 24.
  • Across the 20 countries that Pew has surveyed consistently over time, China now enjoys a higher average favourability rating than the US, with 46 per cent of respondents expressing a favourable view of China compared with 36 per cent for the US, according to the South China Morning Post.
  • The survey polled more than 45,000 people across 37 countries, spanning every region of the world, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
  • The US still leads China on government respect for personal freedoms, though the gap is narrowing, a finding reported by multiple sources.
Researchers attributed the shift to a combination of factors. Silver said the change follows the Covid-19 pandemic becoming a distant issue and as global views of the US have soured. "There was just an actual relationship between the outbreak of the war and the sense that the US is just not contributing to peace and stability and that people have less confidence in Donald Trump," she said in comments carried by France 24 and The Guardian.

Silver also pointed to Trump's demands to control Greenland, the US military raid that captured Venezuela's then-leader Nicolás Maduro, and the US handling of the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza as factors leading to low approval in many countries. Schulman noted that views of China were at or near historic lows in many countries during the pandemic but have since steadily increased, while views of the US have declined and the share of people saying the US is a reliable partner has fallen sharply.

In general, middle-income countries tended to have positive views of China, while wealthier countries tended to have more negative views, researchers found. Singapore was an exception: it had the highest GDP per capita of the countries surveyed but a high level of positivity towards China. The most positive and the most negative views of China came from the Asia-Pacific region.

In 2023, the US enjoyed a much more favourable image than China, with 54 per cent of respondents viewing it positively compared to only 19 per cent for China, according to the South China Morning Post's report of the survey's earlier findings.

Perspectives

The Pew Research Center's researchers offered their own perspectives on the findings. Laura Silver, associate director of the centre's Global Attitudes Research, framed the shift as a notable change in global opinion, emphasising the role of US policies and actions in driving declining confidence. Jonathan Schulman, a research associate, highlighted the rebound of China's image following the pandemic and the corresponding decline in views of the US.

No other named parties were cited in the coverage.