Transcription
When we talk about the rivalry between the world's two superpowers, the US and China, Americans have long had the advantage of better soft power. But Tessa, that seems to be changing.
That's right, Mariko. So there's a major annual study that has found that for the first time in the 20 years of them doing the study, more countries around the world favour China over the US. And there's a reason for that shift, right, Bill?
Yeah. A lot of people will focus on the policies of Donald Trump. Things like putting tariffs on other countries, the Iran war. But China's government has been pretty determined for many years now to improve its global image. So it kind of looks like that's starting to bear fruit. But I guess the question is, is this a short blip or as part of a longer term trend?
I'm Mariko in Singapore and this is Asia Specific from the BBC World Service. Twice a week we bring you Asia Pacific stories unpacked by those who know them best. Tessa Wong is our Asia digital reporter. Welcome back to Asia Specific.
Thanks for having me. I also have the editor of the pod, Bill Birtles. Welcome back.
Hey, Mariko. So, Tessa, we love to talk about the US-China competition on this podcast, we covered AI, EVs, space Race, but today we're talking about pure perceptions of the countries and their leaders. But before we dive in, can you just explain this organisation, the Pew Research Center, who they are and what kind of surveys they do?
So they're an American think tank. They have been measuring global sentiments towards the two superpowers for more than two decades. And what they found recently in this survey that they did earlier this year was that 25 out of 36 countries that they surveyed clearly favoured China over the US, and only six actually favoured the US over China.
So what happened to those?
So the rest of them, they're in the middle. They have roughly, roughly equally favourable views of both superpowers. Um, you know, it's quite interesting to see some of the results. For example, the most positive views of China and the most negative views come from countries in Asia. So for those of you listening, we're showing the the result of this research. So shall we just analyse? Quite a lot of South East Asian countries are on the list. So with Pakistan you can see it's like 90% for China. We've got very high scores from other Asia countries. So it's Indonesia at 72% for China, Singapore 73, Thailand 69. Um, you know, and in some of these countries, we're also seeing huge gaps between the favourability scores for China and for the US. So, you know, in Pakistan, again, it's only 15%, uh, you know, highly favour the US. Uh, and then Indonesia is only 29% for the US. In Singapore is 34%. Um, you know, but interestingly, we also see quite negative favourability scores or rather lower favourability favorability scores for China. So in the Philippines we only see 40% for China, India is 23%, South Korea is 28%. These are all the scores for China and then Japan. It's the most negative views for China. That's 11%. I guess that's not surprising given recent tensions between Tokyo and Beijing.
But I guess when we talk about this, we can't not talk about the two leaders, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. And there was a question, wasn't there, Bill, about how people view those two leaders in this research?
Yeah. I'll get Tessa to help me with the wording here. It's something about trust in them to do the right thing. So the researchers asked respondents, you know, how confident are you in X, meaning Xi Jinping or Trump? How confident are you in this leader to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs?
Yeah. And on that metric, so Xi Jinping actually had a higher result than Donald Trump, although it was both of them were well under 50. Right?
Yeah. So very few countries rated, you know, both or either of those leaders above 50%. So in general, both leaders got relatively low confidence scores, but there were more countries that rated Xi higher than Trump.
But what is doing the right thing mean? Do you think is this like interfere in other countries geopolitical affairs. Is that how we should interpret this?
So they also asked some countries what they call middle income countries what they thought of US and Chinese foreign policy. And in general, they did find that people felt that China would interfere less than the US in like other countries affairs.
I guess the Iran war and other comments made by Donald Trump probably. Yeah. Affected. Yeah, absolutely. It's really important to kind of keep in mind the polling period. When exactly do they do the survey? And they did it between February. Uh, they started in February and they did it for a few months. So that means this came, you know, just weeks after Trump intensified his rhetoric about annexing Greenland. It also came right after the the US captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and it also happened around the time that the US launched its war against Iran. So there's no doubt that all those events would have been foremost on people's minds when they responded to these questions.
I'm just curious, though, Bill. It's one thing to talk about the US policies, but in terms of China's people viewing China more favorably, and Indonesia had one of the biggest swings in this research. And you were a correspondent there. Why do you think that is? US Donald Trump factor is more obvious to people, but the China factor is a slightly harder one to decipher.
So you look at Indonesia in recent years. So their biggest trading partner is China. Their economy is hugely reliant on China. But it's been a more recent phenomenon with Chinese investment particularly in nickel. So that affects people's livelihoods. People are generally aware of the economic importance of China in that country. You look at the. The South East Asia's fastest train high speed rail built by China, built with the Indonesians. But Chinese tech. I've been on the corridor. Whoosh! It's fantastic. It's a great piece of kit. It goes from Jakarta to Bandung in 40 minutes. Tickets are a little bit more expensive than the slower trains, but people are very proud of that. It's China that came and built that. And you have to remember at the time you had figures in the Trump administration like Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw with glee at the prospect of cutting funding to this US global aid arm. And although Indonesia's trade with the US wasn't as significant as, say, Vietnam or Cambodia, it nonetheless sends a message, doesn't it? So I think it's quite easy to understand why this shift has been taking place.
Just to follow on to that, you know, actually, there's a finding in the research that found that middle income countries or what some people might call developing countries, um, they tended to skew much more positively towards China, and wealthier countries tended to be a lot more suspicious of China. China has been investing in its own technological advancements, which is then exporting, um, you know, some of those tech around the world and having a real impact around the world. So that's electric vehicles or even AI, right? And a lot of people are wowed by that. Um, and then I think after Covid as well, there's been a lot of, um, you know, China has opened up a lot more considerably. There's been a lot more tourism. People have been coming in and kind of seeing it, seeing some of the nicer parts of China for themselves. Right.
But I guess the question on China's rising soft power is whether it's organic or is it, you know, kind of part of state media propaganda? You have a pretty strong opinion on this Bill, I know.
I think it's a bit of both. So you look at there are various organisations that study China, like freedom House, uh, ASPI in Australia, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which the Chinese government would dismiss and say it's an anti-China force and all this sort of stuff. But they've done research in the past where they describe something they call "Spamouflage" where they say there's evidence of non organic activity on platforms like YouTube and X, where it appears they don't think they can pinpoint it to the Chinese state. But the assumption is that accounts are being made with AI, which are pushing certain messages or trying to drown out negative hashtags about China. And, you know, Mariko, every time we do an episode that involves China, and I'm sure this one will be the same, the comments are bombarded primarily with pro-China comments, some of them that look a lot like bots. You know, they're not that coherent. Now remember, this is a platform YouTube for those who are watching it on YouTube, which is supposedly it is blocked in China. Are there really that many people getting on VPNs to circumvent the censorship so that they can comment on pretty much any piece of content around the world on Western social media platforms involving China? Maybe. Or is it likely that there might be a bit of coordination involved to get that sort of result on social media.
One of the things I've really noticed in the last few years are those travel videos about Chinese cities, particularly Chongqing, and I had this colleague in Indonesia, I worked with her and she once said to me, she goes, Bill, why is my Instagram flooded with these videos of Chongqing? It looks so cool. And I said, have you been browsing lots of China related content? Is that the algorithm? She goes, no, no, I haven't been doing any of that. So I was thinking, huh, is this just sort of organically floating around, or is there a concerted push to put those sorts of images in front of people? But it goes back to the point. Is it just propaganda? To some degree, maybe, but is Chongqing actually a Blade Runner, cool, aesthetic city? Yeah it is. So there's a lot of truth in it. Yeah.
And I was actually reading an article written by one of your colleagues, Tessa, about how Europeans amid the heat wave that they're experiencing. They're starting to buy a lot more Chinese air cons and maybe that, you know, stigma that may have existed before have made in China products maybe kind of disappearing.
Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting to see how, you know, just a few years ago, there was a huge wave of sinophobia in Europe because of Covid at the height of Covid. And I even wrote about that on the website. And then, you know, fast forward a few more years and then now everyone's, you know, trying to buy a Chinese air con. So I think that's also one example of what I was saying about how, um, you know, a lot of, um, you know, technological advancement or just, you know, the way that China has been able to kind of just pump out a lot of these products into, um, you know, that we use in our everyday life and it can do it at such low cost and, um, you know, can provide, you know, that level of advancement. Um, that's something I think that's undeniable and it is making an impact on people's lives.
Like when we look at the scores for, for Xi and Trump, right. Um, I think there is now that perception where Trump is scoring very, very low. And, you know, that could arguably be because of some of the decisions that he has made, particularly in his second term. And, you know, in comparison, you know, China and see have been trying to make see look like the responsible statesmen, the rational actor in the room. China has been trying to project that image for itself as well for its government. Um, and, you know, that kind of, uh, efforts might be paying off.
But I'm just wondering, maybe some of our viewers, listeners might be thinking, why does it matter? How does a better perception held by other countries help China? Do you want to explain that, Tessa?
It's important because, um, you know, it's in sort of this battle for supremacy, um, for influence for the, over the rest of the world with the US, the only other superpower that it's coming up with against, and, you know, this is something that China has been actively working on for decades, right? It's trying to, um, increase its influence. It's trying to, um, increase its reputation with other countries, you know, so it can help for lots of things for like tourism, but also for trade, for economy, you know, yes, you know, China is sort of, you know, the world's, you know, manufacturing house and one of, you know, the world's exporter, sorry, the biggest exporter to the world. Um, you know, but it, it wants to maintain that lead. It wants to maintain that, uh, that economic advantage. Um, and it just accrues a lot of power through that.
Do you think it could affect the government's policies, though, Bill, like favourable public opinions towards China? Could it possibly change a view of the Australian government, for example, when it's thinking about whether to use Chinese companies and so on?
I look at it in Australia, there's a controversy with the Port of Darwin, which is right near US military bases. Now, it wasn't particularly controversial when the Australian government, during the Barack Obama period, decided to allow US troops to rotate through the base in Darwin. Why? Because Australian perceptions of the relationship with the US at the time were generally pretty high. But it was. And it continues to be very controversial when a Chinese company took ownership on a 99 year lease of the port in that same city. Why? Because particularly during the Covid years, perceptions in Australia generally towards China weren't particularly good. So yeah, I do think it definitely has tangible flow on effects. They might not be immediate, but over time it builds up.
We've been we've been talking quite a lot about countries with favourable views towards China. But as you said, Tessa, three countries stood out in that research weren't there? Japan, South Korea and the Philippines having a very different view towards China? Do you want to explain why that might be?
I mean, first of all, some of these countries, they happen to be staunch allies of the US, right? And they also have had a lot of conflict with China in recent years. Japan, as you know, in recent months, there has been a lot of tension, especially with Prime Minister Takaichi. With the Philippines. There's been a lot of territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, You know, South Korea and China have also have had disputes as well and tensions. Um, and, you know, when the researchers also asked people in some of these countries, you know, could you name the top threat to your country? Um, overwhelmingly a lot of the Filipinos did say that it was China and to some extent the South Koreans and even say the Australians also said, um, China as well. So one of the the findings of this research was that China was seen as both a threat and an ally in the region. And it's no surprise it's a region that's quite divided about its views on the superpower.
Do you think this latest trend that China being viewed more favorably. Do you think this is a short term blip, or do you think this is a kind of a longer term thing that could stay?
So it's quite interesting because this actually is a flip that has been some time coming. If you look at the research that showed, you know, the opinion of the US going down and the opinion of China going up. Yeah. I think if you look at the other polls, we've spoken about things like the Gallup Global Survey, the Lowy Institute poll in Australia, historically, at times when Democrat presidents are in office for whatever reason, tends to have been higher approval results for the United States in other countries. So yeah, it's quite plausible that once Donald Trump's time is up as the Commander-in-Chief, somebody else is in, and there could be a bit more of a bounce back in favourability towards the United States from countries all around the world. What, however, I think has changed is I think China has become two things. China has a become a lot more sophisticated in its global messaging, really, really good with things like short videos and pumping them out on Western social or global social media networks. And the second thing is that China tangibly has more now to promote itself and for people to gravitate towards. What I mean is, you know, snappy electric cars, um, AI, large language models, which seemingly are able to keep pace. Dancing robots. Dancing humanoid robots, uh, you name it. I mean, we've done so many episodes about these things. Um, but it is genuinely cool tech and that is only going to get better as Chinese technology continues to improve. So I just think there really is a better China story to sell now than there was 20 years ago.
Something to add there is that, you know, the results of this survey, the Pew survey found that, you know, very high positivity scores for China, but much lower scores for Xi himself. Um, it could be that with Xi, people tend to associate some of the more negative policies. Perhaps, you know, let's not forget that, you know, there's issues, um, you know, such as the treatment of minorities such as Uyghurs in China. That's hugely controversial and still ongoing. Um, and, you know, there's also, um, you know, accusations of China conducting transnational repression. And as I've spoken about earlier, all these clashes with other countries over territorial disputes. But I think a lot of people tend to associate all that with Xi. And then when they think about the tech advances, the cool stuff, the robots, the the, the AI, the EVs, they tend to think of China itself and they associate the more positive aspects with the country itself.
Let's look out for those comments, shall we? For this episode on YouTube, how those potentially China bots might comment on us. Thank you so much for joining me, Tessa and Bill.
Thanks, Mariko. Thanks for having me.
You've been watching Asia Specific from the BBC World Service with me, Mariko in Singapore. If you have any questions or thoughts on what we covered in this episode or any other stories from the region, please leave us a comment below. You can also get in touch with us on email: AsiaSpecific@bbc.co.uk and click like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. See you next time.