More Americans see China as threat
A Pew survey finds that 60% hold an unfavorable view, up 13 percentage points from a year ago.
WASHINGTON — After a year of tit-for-tat tariffs and bellicose rhetoric from President Trump, American public opinion of China has turned sharply negative, with many more people now seeing the Asian country as the greatest threat to the future of the United States.
A survey by the Pew Research Center released Tuesday found that 60% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of China, up from 47% last year and the highest level since Pew began asking the question in 2005. The sharp increase was evident among Republicans and Democrats alike. A Gallup poll this year showed a similar decline in American sentiments toward China.
The public’s hardened attitudes on China reflect increased friction between the two nations, particularly over trade, and could make China — and Trump’s approach to it — an issue in the 2020 election campaign. Many have questioned his tactics in levying tariffs off and on over the last year.
During his run for president in 2016, Trump frequently attacked China on trade, a message that resonated with blue-collar workers and may have broader appeal in 2020.
“He can capitalize on that,” said Laura Silver, a senior researcher at Pew and an author of the survey report. Asked which country poses the greatest threat to the U.S., survey respondents named China and Russia in equal measure.
Yet even as many more Americans now see China in a bad light — and Beijing’s handling of the protests in Hong Kong certainly isn’t helping — that doesn’t mean there’s widening support for Trump’s strategy or tactics on trade. An earlier Pew survey showed that more Americans viewed increased tariffs as bad for the United States than good.
And Trump’s move this month to heap more tariffs on China could backfire. Ending a short-lived ceasefire, he announced a new 10% punitive tax on $300 billion of Chinese goods to take effect Sept 1. That would be in addition to 25% duties already imposed on $250 billion of imports from China, and will be felt more directly by American consumers since the new tariffs would hit many more household products like clothes, cellphones and computers.
But Tuesday morning, Trump’s top trade official abruptly announced that many of the threatened tariffs would be delayed until Dec. 15, an acknowledgment of the pain they might cause to American shoppers.
Trump also officially labeled China a “currency manipulator” last week after Beijing allowed its yuan to fall in value, crossing 7 yuan to the dollar for the first time since 2008. Analysts don’t think China intervened with its currency to gain an unfair edge in trade, but the threat of currency wars — and Beijing’s retaliatory move to suspend U.S. farm purchases after Trump’s new tariffs — has hammered financial markets and intensified fears of a global economic slowdown.
U.S. public opinion of China has vacillated over the years, but only once in the last 14 years of Pew’s polls on the subject, in 2008, did more Americans have a positive view of China than a negative one. In both 2017 and 2018, 47% of those surveyed said they had an unfavorable view of China, with 44% and 38%, respectively, reporting favorable opinions.
But when the latest poll was conducted, in May and June of this year, the unfavorable rating jumped to 60%, with 26% positive. (The remainder of 1,503 surveyed said they didn’t know or refused to answer.)
As before, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be negative. But the magnitude of the decline was similar and coincides with Trump’s escalation of his trade fight with China over the last year, which has seen the president and administration officials complaining frequently about China’s large trade surplus, Chinese theft of intellectual property and other unfair economic practices.
China’s image also has been hurt by reports of Beijing’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, harsh treatment of dissidents and minorities at home, and U.S. accusations that Chinese telecom giant Huawei poses a serious threat to American national security.
Also, there’s bipartisan backing for taking tougher action against Beijing as the limits of a more friendly engagement policy toward the Chinese government have become evident.
“What you see is Trump and most of the Democratic candidates echoing that broad support,” said Patrick Egan, a public opinion expert at New York University. If public attitudes toward China have soured, he said, it’s in part because of what’s called “one-sided information flows.”
“Trump has been very critical of China and you really haven’t heard any Democratic voices countering him on that,” Egan said. “They’ve countered him on what he’s doing and how he’s going about it, but they actually haven’t disagreed with the fundamental claim he’s making: that China has been an unfair player in the global economic space.”