In China and U.S., Mutual Distrust Grows, Study Finds

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: July 18, 2013

BEIJING — Americans view China in a markedly less favorable light than two years ago, and Chinese attitudes toward the United States have also soured, a sign that the two countries are drifting apart at the level of public opinion, according to a Pew Global Survey to be released on Thursday.

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The survey showed that since 2011, China’s approval rating in the United States has dropped 14 percentage points to 37 percent, the lowest rating for China in any region in the world. Negative attitudes toward the United States among the Chinese rose to 53 percent, a nine-point increase.

The deep skepticism toward China in the United States reflected the persistent worry that China’s fast-growing economy, even though it is slowing, threatens jobs in a weak American economy, said Bruce Stokes, the director of Pew Global Economic Attitudes, in Washington.

But opinion makers in China, and Chinese people familiar with the United States, gave far broader reasons than pure economics for China’s sinking image.

They cited China’s portrayal of itself as a newly confident and rich power on the world stage, a posture that seems threatening to Americans and Europeans. Some Chinese pointed to what they regarded as consistently negative coverage of China in the American news media. China’s suddenly testy relations with some of its neighbors, including Japan, probably contributed to the unease, they said.

In the United States, in particular, Chinese personal wealth has been on conspicuous display, generating bitterness, they said. And Chinese corporations — most recently Shuanghui International, which made a $4.7 billion bid for the United States’ biggest pork producer, Smithfield Foods — are causing consternation about Chinese ownership of brand-name American assets, they said.

Another development that is breeding American resentment, they said, is the Chinese elite’s practice of sending its children to top American schools and universities, in some cases crowding out American applicants with fewer resources.

“It is understandable that Americans and others are nervous about China when it talks about itself as a great power or a major power,” said Rui Chenggang, a prominent interviewer of world leaders on CCTV, China’s state-run television. “It’s understandable that when people see what is happening between China and Japan and neighboring countries, and they see military exercises, that they are nervous.”

Mr. Rui said he believed that concern was misplaced. “All the world thinkers who have decades of experience in China, from Henry Kissinger to Robert Zoellick, say China will be preoccupied by its domestic challenges, like environmental pollution, unemployment among college students and nonperforming loans,” he said.

The Pew results arrive as already bumpy economic and military relations between Washington and Beijing have been damaged further by the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who last month leaked details of the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance of foreigners and Americans.

The survey was conducted in March and April in 39 countries, well before the impact of Mr. Snowden’s actions could be measured. The disclosures about the extent of American cyberespionage have received scornful coverage in China’s state-run news media and have fanned distrust of the United States on China’s Weibo, a popular microblogging platform.

In the United States, Pew interviewed 1,002 people by phone from March 4 to March 18. In China, Horizonkey conducted the survey from March 4 to April 6, with personal interviews of 3,226 people in 12 cities. Pew later bought those results. Both surveys had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

With a focus on the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, the results have piqued widespread interest within the American government. This week, in advance of the survey’s release, Pew briefed State Department officials.

Over all, the United States was regarded more favorably in the world than China, with a median 63 percent to 50 percent. America was believed to respect the personal freedoms of its people far more than China, with large majorities in Germany, France and Spain saying individual freedoms were ignored in China, the poll said.

China was viewed most favorably in Africa, with a 72 percent approval rating, followed by Asia and Latin America, at 58 percent. China’s approval rating in Europe was 43 percent.

China’s low approval rating in the West correlated with the recent findings of Tao Xie, a professor of political science at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

In a paper in the current issue of The Journal of Contemporary China, published by a British company, Professor Tao wrote that people in poor countries admired China’s economic success, while those in the West had negative feelings about China’s political system that trumped its economic achievements.

“In developed, Western countries, people care more about values and political rights,” Professor Tao said in an interview. “Regardless of how cozy a relationship the German leader, Chancellor Merkel, has with the Chinese leaders, at the popular level in Germany attitudes to China are not going to change.”

Professor Tao’s article, “What Affects China’s National Image? A Cross-National Study of Public Opinion,” was rejected by Chinese academic publications because it criticized the Confucius Institutes that the Chinese government has opened in many countries, he said. The article said the institutes, designed to project soft power, had failed to reverse China’s “rather negative image” in most of the countries where they operated.

China’s image abroad, particularly in the United States, faces two major hurdles, said Hung Huang, a prominent media commentator in Beijing.

First, the American news media have given unfair coverage of China, said Ms. Hung, who has lived in the United States and is now an American citizen. Second, she said, the Chinese government bungled its efforts to present China to the world, even as billions were spent on language-training institutes and electronic billboards in Times Square.

“The Chinese government is probably the worst government at PR,” she said. “I don’t think the Ugandan government can do any worse.”

A Chinese businessman, Victor Gao, who is director of the China National Association of International Studies, a group affiliated with China’s Foreign Ministry, said China presented itself in ways that were hard to understand. “The government calls itself Marxist, but that doesn’t match the definition in the dictionary,” he said.

The survey results that showed the United States was losing favor in China were not persuasive, Mr. Gao said. “Many Chinese don’t like the policies of the United States government, but they don’t equate the policies of the government with the people.”

For example, he said, Chinese parents like to send their children to American schools. “They know America is innovative,” he said.