China and Xi viewed more favorably than US and Trump in many countries, new survey finds

WASHINGTON – The world has largely viewed the United States more favorably than China for years, but those views have swung in favor of Beijing this year, according to a new Pew Research Center poll, a remarkable shift due in part to tensions between the Trump administration and US 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, during which the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran.

In only six countries, people view the United States more positively than Chinaaccording to findings published 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, citizens 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 requests for control of Greenlandthe American military raid which captured the then leader of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro and the American management of the Israeli-Hamas conflict war in Gaza have also led to low approval in many countries, Silver said.

“The United States has done a lot in terms of global engagement in recent months or years, which is not viewed positively internationally,” she 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.

Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump has done more than anyone for global stability,” citing Trump’s accomplishments as having “destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities” and “eliminated hundreds of narcoterrorists.”

“President Trump is the leader of the free world, and because of his bold leadership, the United States of America has never been stronger,” Wales said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said the latest poll “demonstrates that China’s governance achievements and development progress are widely recognized.”

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 unleashed a barrage of tariffs on Canadian products last year, and even claimed that Canada could be the “the 51st State”.

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

In the UK, where around 6 in 10 people had a positive view of the US in 2023, they now have a similar view of China and the US. Three years ago, the gap was 32 percentage points in favor of Washington.

Among the six countries where people have a more favorable opinion of the United States, Israel comes out on top. About 8 in 10 Israelis have a positive view of the United States, compared to 19% for China.

The other five countries are Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines and Poland. Yet even their view of the United States has faded in recent years.

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

Although China’s standing has improved somewhat, the narrowing gap is “largely due to the fact that people in almost every country surveyed have become less likely to say that the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people” since 2021, when Pew last asked the question.

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.

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Associated Press journalists Linley Sanders, Emily Swanson and Kevin S. Vineys contributed to this report.