A new Pew Research Center study indicates that, for the first time, more people have a less favorable view of the United States than of China in 25 of the 36 countries and territories included.
Opinion of Chinese leader Xi Jinping is more positive than that of US President Donald Trump in 22 of the 36 territories surveyed, including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, although the majority of the respective populations have low confidence in both heads of state.
In the roughly 20 years that Pew has monitored global opinion, it is the first time China has been viewed more positively than the United States, said Laura Silver, one of the researchers involved in the study conducted between February and May by the Washington-based institution.
Perspectives on Beijing and Washington have been very similar at certain points in the past, but they had never been substantially more favorable to China, she added.
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The director of Pew’s Global Attitudes research unit also noted that the global image of the US has deteriorated following the war waged, alongside Israel, against Iran on February 28.
“There was a factual relationship between the outbreak of the war and the feeling that the United States is not contributing to peace and stability, in addition to people’s lower confidence in Donald Trump,” she argued.
Trump’s demands regarding the potential control of Greenland, the military operation that captured the former leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3, and the way the US head of state has handled the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza have also contributed to the less-than-positive view of Americans in several countries, she detailed.
China, on the contrary, is benefiting from the fact that the memory of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading and is seen as “a much more reliable partner in many places” in terms of contributing to “global peace and stability,” she clarified.
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Canada is one of the countries where public opinion toward the United States has changed the most, as the percentage of inhabitants with a positive view of their neighboring country dropped from 57% in 2023 to 33% in 2026, after Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian products in 2025 and stated that the territory could become the “51st American state.”
Meanwhile, favorable opinion regarding China rose from 14% to 44% on Canadian soil during the same period.
France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands have also changed their opinions regarding the world’s two largest economies, while the inhabitants of the United Kingdom currently hold a similar view of both countries, in contrast to 2023, when 60% of Britons had a favorable opinion of the United States and 28% viewed China positively.
Among the six countries where the population has a more favorable view of the United States, Israel stands out, with 80% of respondents viewing Americans positively compared to the 19% holding a similar opinion of China.
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Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Poland also have a more favorable view of the United States than of China, although that percentage has decreased.
Respondents consider that the US government respects individual freedoms more than the Chinese government, although the gap between the two countries is narrowing, the report clarifies.
To compile the study, Pew interviewed more than 42,000 people across 35 countries, as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with margins of error ranging from 2.3 to 5.5 percentage points depending on the country.
