Global favorability shifts from US to China, Pew survey finds

Canada views of US drop 24 points since 2023

WASHINGTON — A new Pew Research Center survey has found that China is now viewed more favorably than the United States in the majority of countries surveyed, the first such shift in roughly 20 years of tracking, according to Pew, driven by declining confidence in U.S. leadership and fading memories of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The poll, conducted from February to May 2026 and released Wednesday, surveyed more than 42,000 people across 35 countries plus the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Margins of error ranged from 2.3 to 5.5 percentage points depending on the country, Pew said.

In 25 of the 36 countries and territories surveyed, favorable views of China surpassed those of the U.S. Only in six countries did people still view the U.S. more positively than China. The report marks the first time in the roughly 20 years Pew has tracked these opinions that China has been viewed more positively than the United States, said Laura Silver, associate director of Pew’s Global Attitudes Research and a researcher on the study.

Silver told NPR that the shift followed the COVID-19 pandemic becoming a distant issue as global views of the U.S. soured. She pointed to the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran as a key factor.

“There was just an actual relationship between the outbreak of the war and the sense that the U.S. is just not contributing to peace and stability and that people have less confidence in Donald Trump,” Silver said.

She also cited Trump’s demands to control Greenland, the American military raid that captured Venezuela’s then-leader Nicolás Maduro, and the U.S. handling of the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza as contributing to low approval in many countries.

“The U.S. has done a lot in terms of global engagement in recent months to years that is not being perceived positively internationally,” Silver said.

China appeared to have benefited from comparison, Silver said. “By comparison, we know that China is seen to be a more reliable partner in many places. It’s more likely to be seen to contribute to global peace and stability.”

Some of the sharpest shifts occurred in key U.S. allied countries. In Canada, only 33% of those surveyed held positive views of the U.S., down from 57% in 2023. Over the same period, favorable opinions of China rose from 14% to 44%. Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian goods and suggested Canada could become a U.S. state.

In the United Kingdom, where about 6 in 10 held positive views of the U.S. in 2023, opinions of China and the U.S. are now similar. Three years ago, the gap was 32 percentage points in Washington’s favor, Pew reported. Major European powers including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands all shifted their preferences toward China.

Of the six countries where people still favor the U.S., Israel leads, with about 8 in 10 Israelis viewing the U.S. positively compared with 19% for China. The other five are Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Poland, though even those countries’ views of the U.S. have dimmed in recent years, according to Pew.

The U.S. still leads China on one measure: public perception of government respect for personal freedoms. But the gap is narrowing. Pew reported that the narrowed divide was “driven largely by the fact that people in nearly every country surveyed have become less likely to say the U.S. government respects its people’s personal freedoms” since Pew last asked the question in 2021.

Silver said views of Beijing and Washington had been similar at some points in the past but had not been significantly more favorable for China until now.