For the first time in five years, American attitudes towards China have softened compared to the previous year, with a significant drop in the percentage of those who view China as the “enemy”, according to a survey released by the Pew Research Centre on Thursday.
Overall attitudes remain overwhelmingly negative at 77 per cent, but the percentage of respondents with “very unfavourable” views towards China decreased by 10 points from last year, to 33 per cent.
Now, only a third of Americans believe China is a US “enemy” rather than “partner” or “competitor”, compared to last year’s record-high 42 per cent.
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Distrust of China grew during the trade war US President Donald Trump started during his first term and the Covid-19 pandemic, but has persisted as the two countries have jockeyed for geopolitical influence, ramped up technological competition and navigated tensions over spying allegations, human rights and Taiwan.
Pew surveyed 3,605 American adults from March 24 through March 30, after Trump announced two rounds of 10 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports. But the polling came before Trump’s sharp escalation of tariffs on China to 145 per cent this month and subsequent retaliatory duties imposed by Beijing.
According to Christine Huang, a research associate at Pew, this was the first time since 2020 that the think tank had observed a significant year-over-year decline in negative attitudes towards China.
“There have been some fluctuations in the share of Americans who have an unfavourable view of China in the last couple of years, but those fluctuations have not been statistically significant,” she said, while noting that the overall decline since 2024, to 77 per cent from 81 per cent, was modest.
The more significant shift, Huang said, was the decrease in the intensity of unfavourable views, defined by Pew as “somewhat unfavourable” or “very unfavourable”.
The softening of attitudes was especially pronounced for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, though they remained more critical of China compared to Democratic-aligned respondents.
Compared to last year, the share of Republican-aligned respondents with an unfavourable view of China fell 8 percentage points, to 82 per cent, with a 16-point drop in the share holding a very unfavourable view.
Those aligned with the Democratic Party only recorded a 5-point decline in unfavourable attitudes, to 72 per cent.
Republicans are also now just as likely to view China as a competitor (47 per cent) as they are an enemy (45 per cent); they have generally been more likely to consider it an enemy since Pew began posing the question in 2021.
Since last year, the share of Republicans describing China as an enemy has fallen 14 percentage points.
Republicans have also become more likely to regard the US as the more powerful economic power compared to China.
Two years ago, Republicans were about equally likely to describe the US (46 per cent) and China (45 per cent) as the world’s leading economy.
But the share of Republicans naming the US as the top economy has risen 12 percentage points, to 58 per cent, while the share naming China has fallen by 13 points, to 32 per cent.
Democrats, for their part, have become less likely to name China as the greatest threat to the US; the share, 28 per cent, is down 12 points from 2023.
That change, Huang said, was due to more Democrats regarding Russia as a greater threat.
Asked which country poses the greatest threat to the US, respondents overall cited China more frequently than any other. However, in line with the broader trend of softening views, the share who named China fell 8 percentage points, to 42 per cent, since 2023 – the last time Pew asked the question.
Confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping as a world leader has also improved slightly since last year, with a four-point increase in those who have some or a lot of confidence in him, to 13 per cent. Three-quarters of Americans, though, maintain little to no confidence in him.
Older Americans are more likely to lack confidence in Xi. They are also more likely to know who he is.
Just 5 per cent of respondents 65 or older say they have never heard of him, compared to 20 per cent of those 29 or younger.
Jake Werner, director of the East Asia programme at the Quincy Institute, said the softening in attitudes likely reflected the fact that tensions with China had “taken a break” in the early months of Trump’s second term.
Werner, who was not involved with the survey, noted that the moderation in views was probably temporary, adding that American attitudes about China were often not firmly held, unlike views on other issues like race relations or immigration.
“People overwhelmingly have negative views of China, but if you start asking them about it, it doesn’t go very deep.”
“If you start complicating those negative associations, then that changes their view fairly quickly.”
More from South China Morning Post:
- Majority of Americans oppose tariffs on Chinese goods, Pew survey shows
- Southeast Asians expect more US engagement amid Trump’s tariff call: survey
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