... worsening amid concerns including human rights and military power ...
September 29, 20224:38 PM GMT+8
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/opinion-china-advanced-economies-sours-precipitously-under-xi-pew-2022-09-29/
BEIJING/HONG KONG, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Public opinion towards China in the United States and other advanced economies has turned "precipitously more negative" under President Xi Jinping, according to a global survey by the Pew Research Center.
Xi, 69, is widely expected to win a precedent-breaking third five-year term as leader at a Communist Party congress that begins in Beijing on Oct. 16, securing his status as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. read more
While China's economic rise and its investments were seen as a positive for some Latin American, Middle Eastern and African countries, economic competition with China was seen as a "serious problem" in advanced economies like Japan, South Korea, the United States and Australia, according to Pew.
The survey, published on Wednesday, found that unfavourable views of China in developed economies had hovered in a relatively narrow band between 2002-2017, before worsening amid concerns including human rights and military power, with some of the sharpest changes between 2019 and 2020, Washington-based Pew said.
The shift in opinion was triggered partly by perceptions of China's handling of COVID-19, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, as well as a trade war with the United States, aggressive foreign policy and a military buildup in the South China Sea.
In the United States, 82% of respondents this year expressed an "unfavourable opinion" of China, up from 79% in 2020.
The percentage of those who said they had "no confidence" in Xi to do the "right thing regarding world affairs" was 87% in South Korea in 2022, up from 29% in 2015. In Britain, the figure increased to 70% in 2022 from 44% in 2014.
