For the first time in roughly two decades of tracking, more people around the world hold a favourable view of China than of the United States, according to a major new survey by the Pew Research Center. The study, which polled more than 42,000 people across 35 countries and the West Bank and East Jerusalem between February and May 2025, found that in 25 of the 36 surveyed territories, respondents viewed China more positively than the US. In 22 of those countries, people also expressed greater confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping than in US President Donald Trump.
The shift is being driven by two converging trends: a steady rise in favourable views of China and a sharper decline in positive perceptions of the United States. Pew researchers noted previous dips in US favourability — at the end of George W. Bush's administration in 2008 and at the start of Trump's first term in 2017 — but said that on neither occasion had favourable views of China so clearly outpaced those of the US. Laura Silver, associate director of Pew's Global Attitudes Research, attributed the change in part to the fading of the Covid-19 pandemic as a political liability for Beijing, and in part to a series of US actions perceived negatively abroad. These included Trump's demands to control Greenland, a US military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and the US role in the conflict in Gaza. The survey period also coincided with the United States and Israel launching a war against Iran.
The countries that saw the biggest swings toward China included Canada, Spain, Indonesia, Italy and Greece — several of them longstanding US allies. In Canada, positive views of the US fell from 57% in 2023 to just 33%, while favourable opinions of China rose from 14% to 44% over the same period — a period marked by sweeping US tariffs on Canadian goods and Trump's repeated suggestion that Canada could become the "51st state". Major European nations including France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden also shifted. Only six countries still favour the US over China: Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan and Israel, though even in those countries approval of the US has declined.
On the question of leadership confidence, overall scores for both men remained low — most below 50% — but Xi tended to fare better than Trump across the countries surveyed. Researchers noted a difference in how the two leaders are perceived: opinions on Xi were often more muted, while views of Trump tended to cluster at the extremes. The highest confidence in Xi came from Pakistan at 83%; the lowest from Japan at 7%. For Trump, the Philippines gave the highest rating at 68%, while just 4% of respondents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem expressed confidence in him.
Analysts caution against reading the results as straightforward enthusiasm for Beijing. Chong Ja Ian, a non-resident scholar with Carnegie China, noted that China may appear "more predictable" at a moment of US policy volatility, but that Xi remains "a major authoritarian figure" whose government has pursued more assertive territorial claims and faced criticism over minority rights. The Pew data supports this nuance: while China's overall image has improved, a median of 75% of respondents in middle-income countries surveyed said the US interferes in other countries' affairs to a great or fair extent — but 45% said the same of China. The US also retains an edge on perceptions of personal freedom, though that gap too is narrowing, driven largely by declining confidence that Washington respects its own citizens' liberties.