皮尤调查：中国全球好感度首次超美国

Early this month, the Pew Research Center released its 2026 Spring Global Attitudes Survey, a massive 37-country poll asking respondents what they think about other countries across the world. As always, there was lots of interesting stuff in there, but perhaps the most eye-catching finding was that for the first time in recent history, respondents had a more favorable view of China than the US. This is a remarkable reversal and a symptom of the ongoing collapse in America's so-called soft power.

So, in this video, we're going to try and figure out why America's global appeal is declining and ask whether it actually matters. Which flag is better, the Seychelles or Marshall Islands? What about Scotland or South Korea? Trinidad or East Timor? How about a battle of the stars, the EU or USA? Cast your vote in our official flag ranking survey by clicking the link in the description. So, let's start by diving into that Pew survey we mentioned.

The first thing to say is that the reversal in US-China favorability isn't exclusively about America becoming less popular. It's also because China itself has become more popular. If we take a look at the median of all 37 countries polled, China has a net positive global image with 51% expressing a favorable opinion and 39% an unfavorable one. If we break this down geographically, China has a pretty positive image in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia with the notable of India.

While China has a more mixed image in the so-called West and a generally negative image in East Asia and Israel. More generally though, poorer countries tend to have more positive views of China than richer ones do. This trend apparently holds within Europe, too, with the richest countries in the poll, namely Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, being less pro-China than the rest. But even in richer countries, views of China have generally rebounded from their pandemic lows.

Conversely, global opinion towards America has diminished markedly. Again, taking the median of all 37 countries polled, the US has a net negative global image with 37% expressing a favorable view and 57 an unfavorable one. Favorable views have declined significantly in literally every country where data from last year is readily available. With the interesting exception of Mexico. As a consequence of all of this, in many countries, the US-China favorability gap has reversed in the past couple of years.

Including countries that aren't particularly keen on China. Germany, for instance, is one of the more China-skeptic countries in Europe with just 33% of respondents saying they have a positive image of China. But, even fewer Germans, just 27%, say that they have a positive view of America at the moment. Remarkably, just nine out of the 37 countries in the survey, namely Brazil, Ghana, Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan, and Israel, now say that they have more favorable views of the US than China.

So, why is this? Well, obviously, some of