China’s Public Image Actually Getting Worse

As I noted in a Discussion Paper two years ago, China’s global public image has become highly negative in the Xi Jinping era due to growing authoritarianism at home, a souring economy that puts a dent in the idea of a China model for other states, hyper-assertive diplomacy with neighbors, and China’s increasingly close economic and political links to Russia. Indeed, China and Russia recently passed $200 billion in bilateral trade and the upswing shows no sign of letting up, as China has become one of the main places Russia can obtain a wide range of goods.

Recent polling by the Pew Research Center, which has historically closely tracked global views of both China and the United States, suggests that China’s public image globally remains poor, and is possibly getting worse. According to Pew, virtually all of the twenty-four countries surveyed, which include wealthy democracies and developing countries, currently have more favorable views of the United States than of China. (Exceptions were Kenya, which had slightly more favorable views of China, and Nigeria.) Most countries also had far more confidence in U.S. President Joe Biden than in Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a dent in Xi’s desire to re-emerge on the world stage and, seemingly, play a greater leadership role again after several years of virtual isolation at home.

Despite this, China’s overwhelming economic presence in Southeast Asia and the lack of a coherent U.S. counter-strategy, as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework has mostly crumbled, has made China far more powerful than it was even a few years ago in its near region. States like the Philippines and Singapore and, depending on the presidential election coming up, Indonesia, may be turning more to the U.S. for defense cooperation, but increasingly regional polling is showing that Southeast Asian countries see China as the dominant influence. Even in Vietnam, which built a closer partnership with the United States this year, that partnership was followed up by Vietnam solidifying ties with China, showing that China remains one of its most important partners.

China’s poor global image, and the ways in which it has frightened neighbors with its assertive diplomacy and actions in regional waters do still provide an opportunity for the United States. But Washington needs to respond not only with defense cooperation but with a regional economic strategy that, supported by Japan and other key partners, can have greater relevance for South and Southeast Asian countries.