Increase in Developed Countries
Negative views of China grew among people in high-income countries, a survey has found. In the United States, Japan, and Australia, the percentage of respondents with negative views of China exceeded 80 percent. In South Korea, it was more than 10 percentage points higher than when the survey was conducted four years ago.
According to U.S. online media outlet Axios and others on July 28 (local time), the Pew Research Center surveyed more than 38,000 adults in 24 countries around the world between Feb. 20 and May 22 and found that people in most countries had more negative views of China compared to 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the survey, 67 percent of adults held unfavorable views of China while 28 percent held favorable views. Japan and Australia had the highest percentage of adults with unfavorable views of China at 87 percent. Such unfavorable views of China were also high in Sweden (85 percent), the United States (83 percent), Canada (79 percent), and Germany (76 percent).
In several Western countries, unfavorable views of China were the highest-ever in the survey. Unfavorable views of China in South Korea were 77 percent, up significantly from 63 percent in 2019. Elsewhere, the percentage in India rose from 46 percent in 2019 to 67 percent this year, and Brazil saw the percentage rise from 27 percent to 48 percent.
On the other hand, the percentage of unfavorable views of China fell from 36 to 25 percent in Indonesia, 25 to 23 percent in Kenya, and 17 to 15 percent in Nigeria during the same period. Seventy-one percent of respondents across the 24 countries surveyed said that China did not contribute to global peace and stability. Seventy-six percent said that China did not consider the interests of other countries. Also, fifty-seven percent believed that China interfered in the internal affairs of other countries.
In a separate survey of about 13,000 U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center from May 30 through June 4, 50 percent of the respondents pointed the finger to China as the greatest threat to the United States.