American think tank the Pew Research Center’s just-released 2026 global attitudes survey delivered a verdict that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. Drawing on interviews with more than 42,000 respondents, the survey found that the public in most of the 36 countries and regions surveyed now views China more favorably than the United States, marking the first such reversal in more than two decades in Pew’s tracking of global sentiments toward the two countries. Furthermore, global confidence in the Chinese leadership exceeds confidence in the American leadership when it comes to handling world affairs. This is a structural shift in how the global public is weighing the conduct, not merely the capability, of the two major powers.
What this shift illustrates, above all, is that diplomacy itself — how a country behaves toward others day to day — carries far more weight in shaping global opinion than raw economic or military strength ever could. The countries where the swing has been most dramatic are not adversaries of the US but some of its oldest allies. Canada’s favorability toward the US collapsed from 57 percent in 2023 to just 33 percent this year, while its favorability toward China rose from 14 percent to 44 percent over the same period. Comparable reversals played out in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Nothing about these countries’ fundamental interests or values changed in that time. What changed was how each government perceived it was being treated, and treatment, rather than GDP tables or troop counts, is the currency of diplomacy. In a densely networked, instantly informed world, many people will never set foot in Washington or Beijing, so their judgments about which major power is trustworthy are formed almost entirely through the diplomatic signals that both governments send.
The specific American actions cited as drivers of this decline paint a consistent picture of unilateral overreach: threats to annex Greenland and pressure suggestive of designs on Canadian sovereignty; sweeping tariffs applied indiscriminately to perceived rivals and allies alike; military strikes against Iran; and the seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, among other aggressive actions.
Just one day before the Pew report’s release, Washington allowed Executive Order 13936, which had stripped Hong Kong of preferential trade treatment since 2020, to expire, a move China’s Ministry of Commerce credited to consensus reached during the Madrid trade talks. Time will tell whether this is the start of Washington’s genuine turn toward the multilateral, mutually respectful order the white paper envisions or simply a pause in geopolitical maneuvering, but either way, it is real diplomatic choices like this one that will keep rewriting the world’s favorability in the years ahead
Together, they communicate an unpopular image, namely that Washington is willing to subordinate the interests, and even the territorial integrity, of its partners to short-term domestic political incentives. Diplomacy is, in large part, a matter of accumulated small signals, and the incumbent US administration has generated an unusually dense concentration of signals that read abroad as coercive rather than cooperative.
China’s ascent in favorability has followed the opposite logic, with sustained, low-friction engagement rather than dramatic confrontation. Continued Belt and Road Initiative financing across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the propensity to settle disputes through negotiations, and a general posture of economic partnership have all reinforced an image of China as a stable collaborator. The country’s strongest support comes precisely from the parts of the world where it has invested most consistently. Pakistan recorded 90 percent favorability toward China, among the highest of any country surveyed, and much of sub-Saharan Africa likewise tilts firmly positive. This is not to suggest China faces no resistance: In countries like Japan and the Philippines, where historical grievance and territorial dispute factors are involved, the US still leads in favorability. But on balance, China’s diplomatic behavior over this period has been read internationally as constructive engagement rather than disruption, and that distinction now shows up unmistakably in the polling.
This pattern is, in fact, the contemporary expression of a diplomatic philosophy China has practiced for 70 years. Late premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) articulated the principle that Chinese foreign relations should rest on three combined pillars, namely, official diplomacy, semi-official diplomacy, and people-to-people diplomacy, weaving State-level negotiation together with grassroots and cultural engagement into a single coherent strategy. Zhou developed this approach out of necessity in the 1950s and 1960s, when many Western governments had yet to establish official ties with Beijing, and unofficial and civil society channels had to carry the weight that embassies could not. Official diplomacy today does the heavy lifting of institution-building: formal state visits, multilateral negotiations, and programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the newly published white paper on the Global Governance Initiative allow China to set the terms of engagement predictably and at scale, translating directly into the tangible infrastructure and financing benefits that underpin its popularity across the developing world. People-to-people diplomacy, meanwhile, operates beneath the level of state interaction altogether, through cultural exchanges, educational partnership, and media outreach, and it is this quieter layer that shapes everyday public sentiment in ways no treaty can. Zhou himself relied on exactly this channel and pioneered “ping-pong diplomacy” with the US in 1971, inviting the American table tennis team to Beijing well before Washington and Beijing held any formal diplomatic relations, using that sporting exchange to thaw two decades of mutual isolation ahead of then-US president Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China.
China’s June 2026 white paper, “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions”, gives this long-standing practice a formal, contemporary articulation. It proposes a framework for reforming international relations, institutional structures, and global systems amid profound geopolitical shifts, providing further substance to the Global Governance Initiative built around sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and concrete action. And it explicitly calls for amplifying the voice and representation of the Global South within international institutions. In doing so, China positions itself not as a rival power seeking to displace American hegemony but as a partner to developing countries navigating a world order that was designed without adequate regard for their interests. The paper’s vision, of a multilateral, peaceful international system built on mutual understanding rather than zero-sum competition, has well reflected a genuine commitment to the principles it proclaims, and recent developments suggest Chinese diplomacy is increasingly aligned with the stated vision.
Just one day before the Pew report’s release, Washington allowed Executive Order 13936, which had stripped Hong Kong of preferential trade treatment since 2020, to expire, a move China’s Ministry of Commerce credited to consensus reached during the Madrid trade talks. Time will tell whether this is the start of Washington’s genuine turn toward the multilateral, mutually respectful order the white paper envisions or simply a pause in geopolitical maneuvering, but either way, it is real diplomatic choices like this one that will keep rewriting the world’s favorability in the years ahead.
The author is a youth ambassador for the Hong Kong Association for External Friendship.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
