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Mishandling of pandemic, distrust of Xi push negative views of PRC to all-time high

FORUM Staff

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) botched handling of the devastating coronavirus outbreak — compounded by pervasive and persistent distrust of its leader — is generating historic levels of negative sentiment toward China in Europe, North America and the Indo-Pacific, according to a new survey.

In each of the 14 advanced economies surveyed, most respondents had a “somewhat unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” view of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with negative opinions topping 75% in the bulk of those nations, the Pew Research Center reported in October 2020.

Some countries registered their highest level of unfavorable sentiment toward the PRC since such polling began at the start of the millennium, while some had double-digit increases compared with the previous year, according to the Pew survey. In Australia, 81% of respondents viewed the PRC unfavorably, a jump of 24 percentage points since 2019.

“While these changes since last year are stark, in some countries, they are part of a larger trajectory,” the Pew researchers noted. “In the U.S. [United States], for example, unfavorable opinion of China has ticked up steadily since 2018. Similarly, in South Korea, the U.K. [United Kingdom], the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden, this marks the second year in a row where negative views have reached historic highs.”

CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping fared similarly poorly, with at least 70% of survey respondents in each country saying they have no confidence in him “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” The dearth of confidence in Xi hit all-time highs in most countries, Pew reported, with some of the highest percentages registered in the Indo-Pacific, including Australia (79%), South Korea (83%) and Japan (84%).

“Disapproval of how China has handled the COVID-19 pandemic also colors people’s confidence” in Xi, the researchers found.

The PRC’s state-controlled media attempted to paint the Pew survey as biased, with the English-language Global Timesnewspaper complaining that the findings were “the inevitable result” of an anti-China narrative among Western nations.

The survey does not stand alone as evidence of growing global dismay over the PRC’s actions across a spectrum of arenas — from illegal territorial grabs in the South China Sea to debt-trap infrastructure schemes in developing nations to suppression of democracy and human rights in Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang. (Pictured: Activists gather near the Chinese embassy in Seoul in September 2020 to protest the People’s Republic of China’s plan to introduce Mandarin-only classes in schools in Inner Mongolia.)

Concern over Beijing’s motives is fueling Sinophobia, according to a May 2020 article in the online magazine The Diplomat.

A recent survey by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute found increasing majority support among Hong Kong residents for the city’s pro-democracy movement after the CCP imposed a stringent national security law there.

Additionally, on the international stage, the PRC narrowly avoided a chastening defeat in October 2020 balloting for 15 seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council. The PRC received 139 votes in gaining a three-year term on the 47-member council, United Press International reported. It was the lowest tally among the 15 nations elected by the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 member states, and 41 fewer votes than the PRC received in its 2016 election to the council.

The new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center polled 14,276 adults by telephone from June 10 to August 3, 2020. The other nations included were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Among all nations surveyed, a median of more than 6 in 10 respondents said the PRC has handled the COVID-19 pandemic poorly since the virus emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. Negative sentiment was most pronounced in Australia (73%), Japan (79%) and South Korea (79%), according to Pew.

For the first time, more than half of respondents ages 18 to 29 in Australia and the U.S. reported negative sentiments toward the PRC, while South Korea is the only nation where respondents in that age group were more likely than those 50 or older to view the PRC in a poor light.

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