Numerous public opinion surveys from around the world have highlighted a significant shift in global attitudes towards China. Respondents from countries in both the Global South and Global North have expressed increasingly favorable views towards China and less favorable views towards the U.S. As the surveys and other analyses suggest, this shift is in part due to perceptions of U.S. instability and a global media landscape that produces a less hostile picture of China.

The latest poll was published on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. In a survey of 24 countries, respondents in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, and Mexico expressed a higher confidence in Xi Jinping than Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Those in Greece, Italy, France, Australia, and Kenya trusted Trump more than Xi only by five or less percentage points. (Respondents in Japan, Israel, and Poland had the lowest levels of trust in Xi.) Across all 24 countries, Xi obtained a median of 25 percent, compared to Trump’s 34 percent and Vladimir Putin’s 16 percent.

Last week, Xinlu Liang at the South China Morning Post described the results of another survey by U.S. intelligence company Morning Consult showing that, between January and April, favorable views towards China surpassed those towards the U.S. for the first time in recent years:

By the end of May, China had an 8.8 net favourability rating, compared to -1.5 for the US – which is in stark contrast to January last year when the US rating was above 20 and China was in negative territory, Axios reported on Monday, citing exclusive data acquired from Morning Consult.

[…] The report found that since January, the US’ standing had diminished in 38 of the 41 markets tracked, while China’s standing improved in 34 of them. Only in Russia has there been a significant improvement in views of the US since President Donald Trump took office again in January.

[…] During the surveyed period, 16 countries switched from pro-US to pro-China, bringing this group to 29 countries.

[…] “To a large degree, [China’s] leg up over the United States – which began in early March – is attributable to America’s plummeting reputation throughout 2025, which has seen global favourability of the United States fall far faster than views of China have risen,” the report stated.

“The reputational damage done by the ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcements has now sealed the deal.” [Source]

The Alliance of Democracies Foundation published a related survey last month. Summarizing the findings of the survey, Reuters described how global perceptions of China rose above those of the U.S.:

Global perceptions of the United States have deteriorated across the world over the past year and are now worse than views of China, according to an annual study of perceptions of democracy published on Monday.

[…] When asked why perceptions of the U.S. had slipped, Alliance founder and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: "President Trump has triggered a trade war, scolded Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office, left allies feeling vulnerable and enemies emboldened."

[…] The survey also ranked the perception of countries from -100% to +100%.

The net perception rating of the United States fell to -5% from +22% last year, indicating a greater number of respondents with a negative view of the country compared with those with a positive view.

The share of countries with a positive image of the U.S. dropped to 45% from 76% last year, the survey showed.

For China, the net perception rose to +14% this year from +5% last year, the survey found. [Source]

Even Chinese products appear to be gaining some ground. Two weeks ago, Brand Africa in partnership with GeoPoll published its annual report and ranking of the most admired brands in Africa. The ranking is based on a pan-African survey across 31 countries. Among the top 100 brands in 2025, 12 are Chinese and 28 are American. In the 2024 ranking, 11 were Chinese and 28 were American.

Together, these polls reflect similar trends that underpinned previous global opinion surveys comparing favorability towards China and the U.S. A series of polls in late 2022, months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, demonstrated that Xi’s hardline foreign policy had become very unpopular among Western countries. Other polls in the spring of 2024 showed that the U.S.’ foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine pushed attitudes in the Global South towards China at the expense of the U.S. Yet more polls at the end of 2024 showed polarized views of China around the world and in the U.S.

The Economist summarized where the dynamic currently stands, to some extent, with a recent headline titled, “How China became cool.” The article notes that Western livestreamers are partially to credit for China’s improved image. Indeed, American social-media star IShowSpeed’s multi-week tour of China this spring was hailed as a soft-power win for China. Bloomberg also revealed this week that American influencers with over 300,000 online followers have been invited to join a 10-day, all-expenses paid trip to China as part of Beijing’s efforts to showcase the “real China.”

Social media clearly plays a major role in shaping global attitudes towards China. Emphasizing this point, an academic paper by Xiaojun Li and Yuen Yuen Ang forthcoming in the journal Communication and the Public analyzed the relationship between Americans’ media-consumption patterns and public hostility to China: “the analysis reveals that traditional media sources, such as television, radio, and print newspapers, are associated with heightened hostility towards China. In contrast, consistent engagement with online and social media is linked to lower levels of hostility, suggesting that the broader range of narratives available digitally may foster more nuanced and less adversarial views.” Li noted that these trends largely hold even across different age groups.

Looking at media more broadly, Sean Haines wrote last month on his Too Simple, Sometimes Naive substack that China’s global public opinion gains are partly due to “winning the media war”:

The truth is, yes, China is beginning to win the media war, but it is doing so partly by default.

Mostly, the West has crippled itself.

• Capacity — already laughably small for covering a country the size and importance of China — has been further decimated by cuts to key services, like: USAID, or the BBC Global Service.

• Content: by fetishising negative coverage, that has backfired with Chinese people, who feel under attack from foreigners.

• By sloppiness: hastily thrown together hit pieces from afar, that leave holes for the Party to surgically exploit, and shred Western media credibility.

• Or by geopolitical hypocrisy: Western leaders pushing values they themselves fail to practice.

It would be hasty to read this current time as a mere thaw, a temporary correction from China’s historic PR lows.

The underlying fundamentals suggest we’re entering a new paradigm. One where the CPC has locked down its information sphere sufficiently enough, that it can allow only the stories it wants you to hear. The West, meanwhile, is reaching the point it lacks the will or capacity to penetrate that wall. [Source]