Recognizing China’s Place in the World

The geopolitical plates of global public opinion are once again shifting. And this time they are shifting in China’s favor.

According to interviews conducted in spring 2026 by the highly respected Pew Research Center, head-quartered in Washington, D.C., China is now seen more positively than the U.S. by people in most of the 36 high- and middle-income countries surveyed.

Furthermore, based on a subset of 20 countries where the question was asked, more people have confidence that the Chinese president would “do the right thing regarding world affairs” than the U.S. president.

These figures represent a major turnaround from 2023, a nadir in global attitudes towards China. At that time, the median percentage of people in the countries surveyed having a favorable attitude towards China was only 32 percent.  Now it is 46 percent.

Moreover, the percentage favoring China is much higher in most middle-income countries included; it exceeds 75 percent in Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

These headline statistics are important. They represent a fundamental rebalancing of public opinion that counters trends established over 40 years, certainly since the ending of the Cold War. Global attitudes are beginning to reflect changes in the geopolitical world order; international politics can no longer be conducted by, and largely in the interests of, rich countries. However, the headline results do not tell the whole story.

Collecting comparable international information on public attitudes is both difficult and expensive. Measuring change requires repeated surveys; these commenced around 1967 but relate solely to the concerns of Americans. During the 1970s, with the Cold War at its height and anti-communist views prevalent, Americans’ attitudes towards China were consistently unfavorable.

In 1978, the year that Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s reform and opening-up, a survey by Chicago’s Council on Global Affairs asked respondents to rate their feelings towards China on a scale from zero, very cold, to 100, very warm.  The average score was 44, on the cool side.

By 1986, with positive media coverage of China’s market orientated reforms, the score – 53 had turned somewhat warmer.  In February 1989, a Gallup survey reported 72 per cent of Americans having a positive attitude towards China.

Thereafter, when it became apparent that China would not become capitalist as expected but would remain a socialist country with a consultative democracy, American’s feelings toward China became much cooler.  The average score on Chicago Council’s “feeling thermometer” remained stuck in the upper 40s during the 1990s and fluctuated between 40 and 45 throughout the following two decades.

Given that few Americans have ever visited China, their views must be largely influenced by U.S. media, itself a mirror of American politics. With American failure to respond adequately to the global epidemic and the administration briefing against China, public feelings chilled markedly between 2018 and 2020 with the Chicago Council score falling from 45 to 32.

2024 marked the lowest ever rating – 26 –  on the same scale.  The pollsters attributed this to “a sharp turn toward increasingly comprehensive competition” in U.S.-China relations and to “escalated rhetoric” during the presidential campaign between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Gallup and Pew surveys both locate 2023, not 2024, as the low point of Americans’ attitudes towards China. All agree, though, that opinions have changed dramatically since then. Gallup reports that the proportion of Americans whose “overall opinion of China” was negative fell from 84 percent to 61 percent between 2023 and 2026; Pew found that those with a “favorable view of China” almost doubled to 27 percent during the same period.

However, positive U.S. public opinion towards China lags that of the rest of the world.

Based on surveys conducted simultaneously in 20 countries, Pew reports that the median percentage of respondents having “a favorable opinion of China” rose from 32 to 46 percent between 2023 and 2026.  The median percentage having an unfavorable opinion fell simultaneously from 58 percent to just 36 percent.

Positive attitudes towards China are at – or close to – historical highs in a wide diversity of countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, Hungary and Turkey; Colombia, Peru and Mexico; Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

These results are not rogue.  A synthesis of surveys conducted in 130 countries by Gallup indicates that, in 2025, a median of 36 percent respondents approved of Chinese leadership – five percentage points more than favored U.S. leadership.

To an extent, the switchover in preferred global leaders from the U.S. to China reflects the transition from President Biden to President Trump.

Across 36 countries, more than 70 percent of people disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the conflicts affecting Gaza, Iran and Ukraine.  Seventy-seven percent opposed his “Liberation Day” imposition of trade tariffs.

Moreover, the decline in confidence in U.S. leadership has often been greatest among America’s natural allies: Germany, Canada, South Korea, Japan and Australia.  Whereas the populations of America’s allies overwhelmingly believed that the U.S. was a reliable partner under President Biden in 2022, this is no longer true in 2026.  Israel and Hungary are perhaps the only exceptions.

However, President Trump is not the sole reason for changing opinions.  Already in 2024, before President Trump’s second term, most people in 35 countries believed that China had a large impact on their economies. The consequences were viewed as positive in 14 countries, neutral in another five.

China’s position and influence in the world is changing rapidly with the effects of projects such as the US $1.4 trillion of investment through the Belt and Road Initiative being witnessed first in developing countries. The Pew research team therefore asked additional questions of the 17 middle-income countries included in their 2026 survey.

In most of these countries, half or more adults hold positive views towards China and have confidence that Chinese leadership will “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” Majorities in half of these countries also believe that the Chinese government respects personal freedoms. Despite the growing sea change in opinion, these are still minority views in most high-income countries.

Respondents in middle-income countries also differ from those in high-income ones in being more likely to believe that China, “in making international policy decisions,” would “take into account the interests of countries like their own” than would the U.S. Equally they are more likely to think that the U.S. “interferes in the affairs of other countries” more than China and contributes less to “peace and stability around the world.”

Bruna Santos, director of the Brazil Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, offers insight into this greater acceptance of China’s increased international role. She notes that only ten years ago the U.S. had a more favorable image in nearly every Latin American country surveyed by Pew. She reasons that China is now “no longer confined to presidential summits and commodity terminals.” Rather Chinese products are present in homes and “‘Made in China’ evokes mobility and technology rather than disposable, low-quality goods.”  Moreover, she notes that “Washington’s most visible recent moves have involved tariff threats, immigration restrictions, and pressure on governments to reduce their ties with Beijing.”

Returning to Americans’ attitudes towards China, 90 percent opined, as recently as 2021, that Beijing did not “respect individual liberties.”  In 2024, 76 percent considered that China’s economic influence was negative. This year, 28 percent – 44 percent of Republicans – still consider China “to be an enemy.”

These views are countered by Chinese citizens. They rate China’s full process people’s democracy highly, placing China ninth out of 98 countries included in the 2026 Democracy Perception Index.  (The U.S. is ranked 35th on the same scale based on the evaluations of American respondents.)

Just 17 percent of Chinese respondents consider the U.S. to be a friend of China. Nevertheless, 84 percent want friendly relations although most of these would be willing for the Chinese government to seek to limit U.S. power if necessary.

Ninety percent of Chinese adults favor China playing an active role in world affairs (only 56 percent of Americans think the U.S. should do likewise). They prioritize the role of the United Nations with 77 percent believing that China should work within the organization even if this means that compromise is necessary.

The commitment to the United Nations is in fact supported by two-thirds of Americans, despite the current U.S. administration withdrawing from 66 international organizations in January 2026.

The Chinese public, therefore, are supportive of China’s changing role in the world and global opinion is beginning to concur.