China and Xi Jinping are seen better than the United States and Trump in a poll of major countries | Trump administration

The world has largely viewed the United States more favorably than China for years, but those views have swung in Beijing’s favor this year, according to a report. new survey from Pew Research Centera remarkable shift due in part to tensions between the Trump administration and U.S. allies.

More people have a favorable view of China than the United States in 25 of 36 countries and territories surveyed, including Canada and Mexico. The poll was conducted from February to May, a period during which the United States and Israel were engaged in war with Iran.

In just six countries – Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan and Israel – people still perceive the United States more positively than China, according to findings released Wednesday.

Opinions in 22 of 36 countries and territories are also more favorable to Chinese leader Xi Jinping than to U.S. President Donald Trump, including in Canada, Mexico and major European powers including France, Germany and the United Kingdom. However, in many countries people have little confidence in these two men.

This is the first time in about 20 years that Pew has tracked global views that China is viewed more positively than the United States, said Laura Silver, associate director of Pew’s Global Attitudes Research and one of the study’s researchers. Views from Beijing and Washington have been very similar at times in the past, but have not been significantly more favorable to China so far, she said.

The change comes as the Covid-19 pandemic has become a distant issue and global opinion of the United States has deteriorated, Silver said.

“There was just a real relationship between the outbreak of war and the feeling that the United States is just not contributing to peace and stability and that people have less confidence in Donald Trump,” she said.

Trump’s demands to control Greenland, the U.S. military raid that captured Venezuela’s then-leader Nicolas Maduro, and U.S. handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza also led to weak support in many countries, Silver said.

In addition to benefiting from the faded memory of the pandemic, China appears to have gained in comparison with the United States, Silver said.

“In comparison, we know that China is seen as a more reliable partner in many places. It is more likely to contribute to global peace and stability,” the researcher said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said the latest poll “demonstrates that China’s governance achievements and development progress are widely recognized.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Notably, those of some U.S. allied countries have radically changed their minds in recent years, such as Canada. In the new poll, only 33% of Canadians have a positive view of the United States, down from 57% in 2023. Over the same period, their favorable view of China increased from 14% to 44%.

Trump imposed a series of tariffs on Canadian goods last year and even claimed Canada could become “the 51st state.”

Major European countries – including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy – have all changed their views on the world’s two largest economies.

In the United States, where about 6 in 10 people had a positive view of the United States in 2023, they now view China and the United States the same way. Three years ago, the gap was 32 percentage points in favor of Washington.

The United States is still ahead of China in government respect for individual freedoms, although the gap is narrowing, according to the Pew report.

For the new study, Pew surveyed more than 42,000 people in 35 countries as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with margins of error ranging from 2.3 to 5.5 percentage points depending on the country.