New Report Confirms China is Viewed More Favorably Than the US
Your Daily Update for July 16, 2026. Plus: A new report from the Pew Research Center has confirmed that China is viewed more favorably than the US on the global stage.
Welcome to today’s daily update for Thursday, July 16, 2026. Here’s everything you need to know.
The Breakdown
According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, China is now viewed more favorably than the United States on the global stage.
The study examined data from more than 42,000 people across 36 different countries in different geographic and political positions: Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the UK, and the West Bank.
In 2024, 47% of people stated that they had confidence in former US President Joe Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” compared to just 19% for Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, over the last two years, Xi’s numbers have risen, while Trump’s numbers have brought the US below China: in the 2026 survey, 31% of people said they trust Xi to do the right thing, while just 21% trust Trump.
Similarly, trust in both nations has followed an analogous trajectory. From 2024 to 2026, the percentage of those surveyed who viewed China in a favorable light rose from 33% to 46%. In the case of the United States, those numbers dropped from 54% to 36% over the same time period.
According to Pew, many people still think of Xi and China as untrustworthy, but their views on Trump and the United States have sunk even lower than those levels. These views are particularly exacerbated in the Middle East and South Asia – among the nations with the largest differentials were Pakistan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey. Notably, even the United States’ neighboring nations, Canada and Mexico, both have more favorable views of China than America.
Many nations that had seen a massive differential in 2024 saw that gap close significantly over the last two years – for example, in the UK, 59% approved of the US while 27% approved of China in 2024. Today, just 33% approve of the US, while 44% approve of China.
As a whole, the US was viewed more favorably than China in just six nations: Poland, Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan, and Israel – and four of those six countries maintain disputed land or maritime borders with China.
Nevertheless, the US did emerge in front in one particular category. More people expressed that the US respects the personal freedoms of its people than China – but that gap is rapidly closing. Global views on China’s respect for their people’s personal freedoms has remained relatively stagnant, but that of the US has plummeted.
In Sweden, 61% of people believed that the US respected its citizens’ personal freedoms in 2021, compared to just 3% in China’s case. In 2026, those who believe in China’s ability to respect the freedoms of its people remained almost the same – hovering around 6% – but the US took a plunge. Today, just 27% of Swedish people believe that the US respects its citizens’ freedoms, and this trend remains the same across almost all of the 36 countries included in the study.
The United States’ favorability on the global stage is plummeting, while China’s is on the rise. Could this be the rise of the next world order? Or is it just a side effect of President Trump’s handling of international relations? Let us know in the comments.
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The Global Snapshot
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