Pew: Record Number of Americans Unfavorable Towards China in New Pew Research Center Survey
The Pew Research Center recently released the results of its latest global survey on US-China relations.
I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation by Richard Wike, Director of Global Attitudes Research with the Pew Research Center. He presented some key insights from the recent survey results, which were published and are available here: www.pewresearch.org.
The results and insights are beyond interesting because they shed significant light on the underlying sentiment about both countries in today’s global environment of trade wars and economic tensions.
While the new study focused mostly on survey results from Americans, it also expanded to include respondents in 25 countries to offer a flavor of current global opinions about US-China relations and their respective perceptions of each as an economic power.
Overall, younger generations of Americans are more favorable towards China today than older generations. In fact, PEW found that 34% of Americans between 18–29 years of age were favorable towards China between, whereas that figure was 27% for the 30–49 demographic and a mere 22% for the 50+ age group. This older demographic had a 67% ‘unfavorable’ perspective on China, which was by far the highest among polled groups of Americans on this question.
For the future of global trade, trust, and integrated markets/people/cultures, the encouraging trend here is that the youngest demographic of Americans hold the highest favorable view of China. As their careers develop and they enter leadership positions, their positive sentiments can contribute to growing trust and a healthy expansion of the US-China business relationship.
This same question about favorable/unfavorable views of China also showed a noticeable disparity across party lines, with 30% of Democrats viewing China favorably with only 20% of Republicans sharing that view.
Another key insight to note is the sharp increase of negative views of China recently, specifically with respect to Republicans surveyed in the study. While the chart below denotes a consistent gap between Democrat and Republican views over time, with the closest alignment in 2007–2008, and 2018. However, the most notable point in the below trend-line is the current (2019) negative view on China among Republicans at 70%, a figure not seen before in this analysis. It is not easy to correlate the impact, if any, these findings may be having behind closed doors as negotiators in Washington DC and Beijing continue to go back and forth with possible resolutions to the trade-war.
One thing seems certain though, uncertainty is the key message that is rippling across global markets since it is nearly impossible to trust or believe the public comments from both sides about progress in the trade talks. Mr. Trump’s positive Tweets about progress and possible breakthroughs with China are often quickly invalidated by the responses to his messages by Beijing trade authorities, in addition to researchers and media outlets struggling to corroborate his messages by speaking with administration and trade officials to get a sense of the details that may or may not support the messages shared by Mr. Trump.
The next time that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi are scheduled to meet in person is in Santiago, Chile in November 2019 at the APEC Summit. Early speculation (hope) is that trade officials are currently working hard on resolution proposals for Mr. Trump to evaluate and possibly approve to pave the way for a productive meeting between the two leaders in November, whereby progress and a potential resolution of the trade dispute could be finalized. Today, this is pure speculation and there is no evidence to support that theory but since Mr. Trump claims to highly value relationships and he recognizes the importance of in-person meetings for important matters and as such, he is likely also hopeful for a breakthrough at the November meeting in Santiago, Chile.
Another important, and somewhat alarming, finding from the Pew study was the growing share of Americans with an unfavorable view of China. As the chart above shows, from 2005–2012, there were more Americans that had a general favorable view of China as compared to those with unfavorable views. The two high points for favorable views were in 2006 (52% favorable vs 29% unfavorable) and 2011 (51% favorable vs 36% favorable). However, the most concerning trend is that from 2006 through 2019, there has been a steady incline in the share of Americans that have an unfavorable view of China.
From a low of 29% in 2006, the inflection point where the majority shifted towards unfavorable occurred in 2012, with the unfavorable statistic growing to a whopping 60% in 2019. This is very concerning because — despite Americans’ sources of information about China and the drivers of their changing sentiment over time— China remains the #2 economy in the world, destined to inevitably become #1 and surpass the US in the next 15–30 years. China is a high-tech innovation center that is surpassing Silicon Valley in the past 12–18 months highlighted by the fact that VC Series A investments in China have been 3x similar Series A investments in Silicon Valley in recent times. According to Alex Conrad who manages the global Midas List for Forbes which monitors global VC investment trends, while the U.S. remains the #1 destination for investments, China is growing faster than any other international market and it is accelerating.
It is not a stretch to highlight that a growing public media narrative with ‘China as an enemy of the U.S.’ began around 10–12 years ago in the US, closely correlated with the growing public negative sentiment towards China over this period according to the Pew study. China continues to manufacture most of the everyday and high-tech products we use in America. China continues to own several trillion dollars of US debt, and is developing and maturing its economy, infrastructure, government and military spending. While China is not perfect and continues to self-evaluate and patiently and diligently consider its growing place in the world, the truth is that they have a well-defined strategy with clear and articulate goals. The US also is far from perfect with many internal problems and a growing friction with foreign nations, but its economy remains strong and this will likely be the most important factor that impacts the US presidential election in 2020.
Despite the Pew results about Americans views on China, global respondents clearly see China playing a more important and influential role in the world over the past decade. As the chart below shows, Pew’s survey question to respondents in 25 global countries about the influence of seven major global powers reveals a sharp increase for China. Of the seven countries in the question — China, Russia Germany, U.S., India, France, U.K. — it was China that experienced the greatest jump over the past decade with respect to people seeing China as having a ‘more important role’ in the world when compared to the other nations.
Another key result of this question is the number of people that see the US playing a ‘less important’ role in the world compared with China. 25% of respondents see the US as playing a less important role in the world today than a decade ago, whereas this figure was a mere 8% of respondents when considering China playing a less important role in the world.
When Americans were asked about their greatest concerns with respect to China, the dominant response was around ‘the large amount American debt held by China’, followed by cyber-attacks. The chart below offered 8 major concern areas for this question to allow American respondents to discuss their most alarming ones with respect to level of seriousness.
What this tells me is that most while a growing number of Americans have an unfavorable view of China (at unprecedented levels today), many may be likely basing their opinions on preconceived notions, biases, stereotypes, and a dangerous and inaccurate media narrative that depicts China as a growing enemy of the U.S. Like it or not, our economies are deeply coupled, the trade relationship is massive, and the potential long-term consequences of a growing mistrust, misunderstanding, and miscommunication from both sides will actually end up punishing both Chinese and Americans alike.
Even with a growing unfavorable view of China among Americans, supported by the US media fueling a narrative about mistrust and misunderstanding, many people working in the trenches at the intersection of the US-China business community are actually quite optimistic. Communication, understanding, knowledge, facts/evidence, empathy, and trust are the hallmarks of a robust and healthy business relationship. Judgments, criticisms and unfounded stories fuel negative sentiments, without merit.
Source: www.pewresearch.org