Negative views about China have soared over the past year, a new survey of advanced economies has shown.

The 14-country survey, conducted by Pew Research Centre, showed that in countries like the US, UK and Australia, an unfavourable opinion of China has reached its highest point since the centre started polling on this issue more than a decade ago.

While negative views on China have grown in recent years, the latest survey shows a sharp rise in such views in 2020. The Pew survey found that a majority in each of the 14 countries has a negative opinion of China.

The countries surveyed include Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea, Spain, Canada, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium and Denmark.

What Pew survey shows

Negative views about China spiked most in Australia, where 81 per cent now look at the country unfavourably, an increase of 24 percentage points since 2019.

In the UK, three in every four people see China in a negative light, an increase of 19 points.

In poll-bound US, negative perceptions of China have increased almost 20 points since Donald Trump became president, and 13 percentage points since just last year.

The survey was conducted between June 10 and August 3, with 14,276 adults polled via phone.

Perceptions of China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively influenced people’s overall views of the country.

Why opinions about Xi are turning sour

To be sure, the Pew Research Centre survey paints an even bleaker perception of the US under Donald Trump, but there is reason to believe that this has more do with the incumbent president and his persona rather than a dramatic and fundamental re-evaluation of America’s role in the rules-based world order.

But the negative opinions about the Xi Jinping regime appear to be driven by both immediate factors and larger concerns about Chinese behaviour.

The devastation caused by pandemic around the world might have been contained to some extent if Beijing had been open about the new virus that was making people sick in Wuhan in December 2019 and possibly even earlier.

Beijing may have successfully contained the outbreak within its own country in a few months, but the ruling Communist Party appears to be unaware of the simmering resentment its handling of the crisis has triggered in rest of the word.

And as if the double whammy of the coronavirus that originated in China and the subsequent economic meltdown was not bad enough, the entire Asia-Pacific region is facing an increasingly belligerent China. From Ladakh and the South China Sea to Taiwan and the seas near Japan, China’s military has used the distraction and chaos caused by COVID-19 to grab more territory and threaten countries.

For many world powers hopeful of the rise of a peaceful China and its integration into the rules-based international order, the Xi Jinping regime’s actions in the past year have ended most rosy projections of a benign Beijing.   

The Pew survey tells us that the citizens of these nations share their leaders’ concerns and not many people in these 14 countries trust China will do the right thing in world affairs. The developed world is in the middle of a long-overdue re-think on China. The question is whether it is already too late.