Most Americans not confident in how China’s Xi will handle world affairs

Most U.S. adults in a survey say they’ve little confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping will “do the precise thing regarding world affairs,” in keeping with the poll by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday.

Despite that pessimism, greater than half of individuals within the U.S. said the 2 countries can work together on trade and economic policy, the survey found.

The study, covering greater than 3,500 U.S. adults between March 20 and 26, comes as U.S.-China tensions escalate to the purpose of limited bilateral interaction. Exerting pressure on Beijing is certainly one of the few topics with strong bipartisan support within the U.S.

Meanwhile, Xi has consolidated his power in China and is searching for to to bolster China’s global influence.

In March, China brokered the restoration of diplomatic ties between Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Beijing has thus far refused to sentence Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, while calling for peace talks.

It’s unclear how aware Pew survey respondents were of such world events and developments.

The study found 13% of Americans who participated within the survey said they’ve never heard of Xi — a percentage that surged to 27% amongst respondents ages 18 to 29.

Nevertheless, many of the respondents took a pessimistic view: Nearly half, or 47%, said that they had “no confidence in any respect” in Xi handling world affairs well, while one other 30% said that they had “not an excessive amount of confidence.”

About three-fourths of respondents said that China doesn’t take the interests of nations reminiscent of the U.S. under consideration, and that China interferes within the affairs of other countries, the report said.

Greater than half of the respondents said China doesn’t contribute to global peace and stability.

That directly counters Beijing’s narrative that it is a contributor to world peace and economic development.

China has accounted for well over 15% of world GDP within the last several years, in keeping with World Bank data. In 2010, China surpassed Japan to turn into the world’s second-largest economy, behind only the U.S.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs this 12 months published papers that highlight U.S. involvement in “many wars overseas” and claim U.S. alliances within the Asia-Pacific are meant to “undermine peace.”

U.S.-China cooperation on economic matters was certainly one of two areas during which Pew survey respondents remained more optimistic.

Just over half said the 2 countries could cooperate on trade and economic policy, the report said, without detailing questions on specific policies.

The one other category for which greater than half the respondents said each countries could cooperate was student exchange programs, Pew found.

The variety of Chinese students within the U.S. and American students studying in China dropped sharply during the Covid pandemic. It was a mirrored image of an overall withering of bilateral travel that has yet to get better significantly, in keeping with a report last week published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan policy research organization and Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The report was co-authored by Scott Kennedy, CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, and Wang Jisi, founding president of Peking University’s Institute of International Strategic Studies.

In visits to China within the last 12 months, Kennedy said people he met told him Washington was fully accountable for the decline within the U.S.-China relationship, and that China was still on the inevitable path of becoming a serious power.

China is usually expected to overtake the U.S. because the world’s largest economy in the approaching years.

One deep-seated narrative in China, ceaselessly mentioned by Xi, is that the ruling Chinese Communist Party is leading the country “on the precise side of history” and out of nineteenth century “humiliation” by Western imperialists.

Pew survey respondents mostly didn’t see areas of potential cooperation between the U.S. and China.

Out of 5 such areas listed within the survey, three saw greater than half of respondents expressing pessimism: resolving international conflicts, climate change policy, and coping with the spread of infectious diseases.

“I do not know what we could possibly work with them on. Actually not the climate,” the Pew report said, citing a 25-year-old unnamed woman who participated in a spotlight group.

The Biden administration has said the U.S. is in competition with China, and imposed export bans on critical semiconductor technology to China. It followed the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods and blacklisting of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

The most recent Pew survey found that almost half the people surveyed within the U.S. said China gets more from the bilateral trade relationship, and greater than 80% said China’s growing technological power is a serious — if not very serious — problem for the U.S.

Xi and President Joe Biden met in person in November for the primary time since Biden took office. But in keeping with public records, the 2 leaders haven’t spoken because the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon in American airspace in February.