China’s reputation has deteriorated rapidly over the past four years, particularly in the West, and a large share of global opinion would back some form of international help for Taiwan if Beijing tries to take the nation by force, a survey showed.
It comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) warned of “dangerous storms” on the horizon as he was confirmed on Sunday as Chinese leader for an unprecedented third term, and as Washington says that Beijing is accelerating plans to annex Taiwan.
The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project poll also showed that, while sentiment toward China was significantly more favorable in other parts of the world than it was in the West, a majority of respondents in 20 of the 25 countries surveyed prefer the US as reigning superpower.
Guardian graphic
The survey revealed a dramatic decline in China’s global standing since the poll was first conducted in 2019, with the percentage of respondents saying they felt China played a positive role in the world falling by as much as half in some countries.
Pro-China sentiment has collapsed over the past four years, from 46 percent to 24 percent in Poland, 36 percent to 17 percent in France, 30 percent to 13 percent in Germany, 32 percent to 11 percent in Denmark, 41 percent to 24 percent in Italy, 35 percent to 11 percent in the UK and 44 percent to 23 percent in India. It has fallen from 27 percent to 18 percent in the US.
While the COVID-19 pandemic partly informs this negative sentiment — with majorities of more than 80 percent convinced that it started in China, and at least 40 percent in many countries suspecting it originated from a Chinese laboratory — human rights abuses also appear to be an increasing focus.
In countries including France (45 percent, up from 39 percent), Germany (53 percent, up from 46 percent), Denmark (53 percent, up from 45 percent), Spain (30 percent, up from 21 percent) and Greece (29 percent, up from 18 percent), more people this year than last selected China from a list of countries as one they believed had “put hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, or more, into mass prison camps, without fair and proper legal process.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a report last month that China had committed serious human rights violations against Uighurs in Xinjiang, possibly amounting to crimes against humanity.
The report said there was an acute risk of arbitrary detention, and that it was “reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred in [vocational education and training center] facilities, at least during 2017 to 2019.”
The YouGov survey, conducted from Aug. 24 to Sept. 22, identified a significant bounce in positive opinion of the US, with several countries showing a V-shaped pattern in which positive views fell from 2019 to 2020, but climbed back up, often to reach a new high, over the past two years.
US leadership has become markedly more popular. This year, 62 percent of respondents in Germany said they preferred the US over China as the most powerful force in world politics, against 43 percent in 2019, and 67 percent in the UK, up from 52 percent.
In the vast majority of countries, far more people chose the US over China as their preferred superpower, undermining Beijing’s hopes of being seen as an alternative source of global leadership — by margins of 77 percent to 15 percent in Nigeria, 69 percent to 9 percent in India, 48 percent to 23 percent in Mexico, 59 percent to 11 percent in Brazil and 45 percent to 19 percent in Greece.
Nonetheless, there was still some good news for China in the results, which showed “an obvious divide between the West and other parts of the world in general sentiment towards it,” YouGov academic director Joel Rogers de Waal said.
Majorities in nine out of 12 non-Western countries in the survey had positive views of China’s role in the world, and there was evidence that Beijing’s reputation was improving in several countries.
In Mexico, positive views of China rose to 59 percent this year, from 50 percent last year. Positive opinions in Egypt and Saudi Arabia rose to 57 percent this year from 47 percent and 41 percent respectively last year, while Thailand, Kenya and Nigeria showed similar jumps.
Regarding Taiwan, majorities in about half the countries questioned — including the UK (51 percent), Australia (62 percent) and the US (52 percent) — said that “other countries should provide help to Taiwan” if China used force to annex the nation.
Sweden (55 percent), Denmark (51 percent) and, beyond the West, India (51 percent), Japan (55 percent), Kenya (63 percent) and Nigeria (60 percent) also showed majorities, while in most other countries, including France, Germany, Spain and Poland, more people (38 percent, 43 percent, 38 percent and 40 percent) favored providing help to Taiwan than not (22 percent, 27 percent, 22 percent and 15 percent).
Backing for a US-led alliance providing heavy weapons or troops to Taiwan was generally low, but providing intelligence or military advisers — and imposing heavy economic sanctions on China — was supported by at least 40 percent of respondents in 10 of the 13 Western countries surveyed.
Countries such as Sweden, Poland, the UK, the US, India and the three surveyed African countries of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa were also willing to consider “hybrid warfare” measures such as cyberattacks and pro-Taiwanese messaging.
“In other words, public opinion reflects a combination of two sentiments,” Rogers de Waal said. “There’s a predictable aversion to the prospect of physical confrontation with China, but also considerable support for the cause of Taiwanese defense in principle.”
He said the African countries in the survey could also highlight another significant trend, with all three showing high levels of support for help for Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, but also large majorities with a positive view of China’s role in world affairs.
“Public opinion is often not as binary as the policy debate might suggest,” Rogers de Waal said. “It may be that plenty of people are capable of having both a sympathetic view towards the defense of Taiwan, and a favorable one towards China as a powerful force within the international system — albeit not as an outright alternative to it.”
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