China has become more popular than U.S. in much of world, survey finds
China’s global image is on the rise as America’s sours, according to a Pew survey of more than 40,000 people around the globe.
People view China more favorably than the United States in countries across six continents, a stark shift seen in recent years as perceptions of the U.S. sour, according to findings by Pew Research Center.
People in 27 of the 36 countries and territories surveyed have a higher opinion of China than the United States. Among the 20 nations also polled in the version of the survey Pew conducted last year, the median view in 2025 indicated more favorability for the U.S. than China.
“Some of the views that we see of the U.S. are at or near historic lows,” said Laura Silver, associate director at Pew, a nonpartisan, Washington-based “fact tank.”
The shift comes amid a spate of highly visible, and controversial, U.S. involvements on the world stage, including the second Trump administration’s threats to annex Greenland and Canada, the ongoing war in Iran, the imposition of U.S. tariffs on nearly every economy in the world, the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Pentagon’s targeting of boats in the Caribbean, and the gutting of U.S. foreign aid.
At the same time, views of China have risen since the coronavirus pandemic, when they reached a “floor of extremely negative views,” said Silver, a co-author of the report. “The way global politics are playing out right now, we do see shifts in both [views of the U.S. and China] at the same time.”
This year’s survey of 42,151 people carries an average margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.
Countries that now view China more positively than the United States include longtime U.S. allies such as Britain, Canada, France and Germany. People in all four viewed the U.S. more favorably than or just as favorably as China last year, according to Pew’s data.
“The last two years have just decimated the idea that the United States can be trusted as a reliable partner in anything,” said Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “China has aggressively stepped in to take advantage of that.”
The shifts are dramatic in some cases. In Britain last year, 50 percent of people viewed the U.S. favorably, compared with 39 percent for China. This year, China’s favorability rose to 46 percent, while the United States’ sank to 41 percent.
Britain has seen its “special relationship” with the U.S. falter as President Donald Trump has levied tariffs on its close ally and voiced anger at the British government’s initial refusal to be drawn into the Iran war. The conflict in the Middle East also pushed inflation higher at a time when Britain was already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.
The Iran war is another major factor in global perceptions that played out during the period in question: Pew began surveying respondents in early February, just before the start of the war, and collected responses into May. “We were able to look at how attitudes shifted when it comes to views of the United States as March and April dragged on,” Silver said. “In many countries, views of the United States were more negative if people were surveyed later, as the war had taken more of a toll.”
Yet views remain highly varied. Closer to home, China remains unpopular with many of its neighbors. In recent years, China has used naval patrols and weaponized coast guard ships to press territorial claims in the South China Sea that Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia dispute. India and China have also clashed in the past few years over disputed territory along their shared border.
People in Indo-Pacific countries allied with the U.S. — among them the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and India — remain more supportive of the U.S. than China, according to Pew’s data.
Japan, where Pew found 11 percent of people have favorable views of China, has emerged as a leader in the effort to contain China‘s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. In November, tensions between China and Japan escalated when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested Japan would defend the self-governing island of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
China’s economic investments in less affluent Southeast and South Asian countries, however, could be tipping the scale back in Beijing’s favor. Since 2013, China’s Belt and Road initiative — an ambitious push to build infrastructure across much of the developing world, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh — has helped burnish Beijing’s image abroad.
Among the countries surveyed, the most substantial share of support for China is in Pakistan, where 90 percent hold a favorable view of China and just 15 percent hold a favorable view of the United States. Pakistan boasts the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, often considered the “flagship” project of the Belt and Road initiative.
A similar pattern occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. Among other Belt and Road projects, Beijing has funded a port expansion in Ghana, urban mass transit in Nigeria, a major rail line in Kenya and wind power in South Africa.
China enjoys net positive approval in the four African countries Pew surveyed, and only in Ghana is the U.S. more popular than China — barely.
The U.S. presence in Africa has been diminished under the second Trump presidency. The White House’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2025 hit much of Africa, which previously received a quarter of all USAID funding, particularly hard. Nearly 80 percent of African embassies are without ambassadors — and of the four sub-Saharan African countries Pew surveyed, only South Africa has an American ambassador in the country.
“China has more embassies [and] more diplomats than us now” in Africa, Kurlantzick said. “China has also launched a massive, massive global state media offensive with tons of resources. People in a lot of developing countries are getting much more of their news from [Chinese news agency] Xinhua.”
More broadly, the data suggests that global perceptions could be shifting to give less weight to freedom and democracy. In many countries where people view China more favorably than the United States, they nevertheless said the U.S. government is more likely than the Chinese government to respect its citizens’ personal freedoms, Pew found — though the gap in these perceptions has considerably narrowed since 2021.
The mismatch could indicate that perceptions of a country’s level of freedom at home might not bolster its reputation abroad to a degree that outweighs other factors.
China’s growing popularity stems from the widespread view that democracy leads to “polarization and chaos,” Kurlantzick said. China and other authoritarian countries are “doing a lot to undermine the idea that democracy is the best political system, period. That is working very well.”
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