Poll: China, Russia still least trusted by Pinoys

Most Filipinos believe that the Philippines cannot trust China and Russia too much or not trust these countries at all, a Pulse Asia survey showed yesterday, wherein the two countries remained least trusted.

The survey, conducted from June 24 to 30, showed 74 percent of the 1,200 respondents believe the Philippines should not trust China while 57 percent felt the same about Russia.

On China, 35 percent of Filipinos are of the opinion that the Philippines should not trust the Chinese too much, while 39 percent say they should not be trusted at all.

About the same percentages of Filipinos say the Philippines should not trust Russia too much (40 percent) while some think Russians should not be trusted at all (18 percent).

Those who say the Chinese should not be trusted at all increased from 20 percent to 39 percent, while those who believe “a fair amount of trust” should be given to China dropped 12 points from 33 percent in December 2018 to 21 percent in June 2019.

Trust, meanwhile, is the predominant sentiment toward Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.

Small to huge majorities of Filipinos say the Philippines should extend “a great deal/ fair amount of trust” to the US (89 percent), Japan (79 percent), Australia (76 percent), Canada (71 percent), Malaysia (63 percent), the UK (56 percent), Indonesia (56 percent) and Vietnam (53 percent).

The prevailing opinion among Filipinos is that the Philippines should extend a fair amount of trust in Australia (63 percent), Canada (59 percent), Japan (59 percent), the US (56 percent) and Malaysia (51 percent).

Meanwhile, big pluralities are of the view that the Philippines should show a fair amount of trust toward the UK (47 percent), Indonesia (47 percent) and Vietnam (44 percent).

Pulse Asia said public opinion on the matter remains essentially unchanged between December 2018 and June 2019, except for the increase in the percentage of Filipinos who believe the Philippines should extend a fair amount of trust to Australia (up six percentage points).

Pulse Asia also noted the decline in the percentages of those saying the same thing about China (down 12 points), the rise in the percentage of Filipinos of the view that the Philippines should not trust the UK too much (up six points) and the drop in the percentage of Filipinos who express the same sentiment toward Japan (down six point percentage points).

The survey also showed an increase in the percentage of those saying China cannot be trusted at all (up 19 percentage points).

The poll used face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults, 18 years old and above. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.