According to the Pew Research Center survey, Thailand has the most positive view of China, followed by Nigeria, Kenya and Tunisia.
China’s economic influence is felt around the world, but whether it is viewed positively or negatively depends largely on each country’s economic development, a survey of 35 countries has found.
According to a Pew Research Center poll released this week, people living in high-income countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe have a generally negative view of China, with an average of 70% of people across 18 countries expressing negative sentiment.
Those perceptions were reversed in middle-income countries such as Thailand, Kenya and Bangladesh, where a median of 56% of respondents across 17 countries reported a favorable view, according to figures released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
Individual views vary widely across the 35 countries surveyed, with the lowest approval rating in Sweden at 11 percent, followed by Japan (12 percent), Australia (14 percent) and the United States (16 percent).
Thailand had the most positive view at 80 percent, followed by Nigeria (75 percent), Kenya (73 percent), Tunisia (68 percent) and Singapore (67 percent).
A similar split was found regarding perceptions of whether China has had a concrete positive or negative impact on the economy.
While 57% of people in high-income countries view China’s economic influence negatively, 47% of people in middle-income countries view it positively.
In the United States, 76% of respondents expressed a negative view of China’s economic influence, followed by Germany (69%), France (68%) and Canada (68%), with similarly negative views seen in Europe, Japan, South Korea and India.
Singapore and Malaysia have the most positive view of China’s economic influence, with 67% of respondents expressing a favorable view, followed by Nigeria (64%) and Thailand (63%).
Pew Research Centre attributes this sentiment in part to China’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure project, which has seen the country invest more than $3 trillion in other countries over the past decade.
Views of Chinese President Xi Jinping were generally negative, with a median of 24% of respondents expressing confidence in the leader and 62% saying they had little or no confidence in him.
Those with the most negative views were Japan (87%), Australia (85%) and Sweden (82%).
Favorable views of Xi Jinping were highest in Singapore and Thailand, where 63% of respondents said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Chinese leader, followed by Malaysia (55%) and Bangladesh (51%).
Nine middle-income countries that were surveyed separately about the impact of Chinese companies on their economies reported generally positive results.
A median of 72% agree that Chinese companies have a positive impact on their country’s economy, with the most positive views expressed in Thailand (81%), Kenya (80%) and Bangladesh (79%). The three countries also had generally positive views of Chinese companies’ impact on the environment and their treatment of local workers.
India had the most negative view, with only 49% of respondents saying they thought Chinese companies had a positive impact on their economy, followed by Ghana (55%) and South Africa (57%).
In the Asia-Pacific region, nine in 10 countries surveyed expressed high levels of concern about China’s territorial disputes in the region.
The highest level of concern was expressed in the Philippines, which has frequent clashes with Beijing over territorial claims in the South China Sea, where 91 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat worried.
The Southeast Asian nation was followed by South Korea (87%) and Japan (86%), which also have similar disputes in the East China Sea, as well as Australia (82%) and India (69%).
