HONG KONG, 07 Oct. - (ANA) - Negative views towards China have soared in the past year in the US and several other advanced economies, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

 

The study found that a majority in each of the countries polled had an unfavourable opinion of China. In several countries, including Britain, Australia and Spain, negative views reached their highest points since Pew began polling on the topic more than a decade ago.

 

It’s all too easy to blame Donald Trump for the upheaval in current affairs. The U.S. president’s trade wars and hostility toward multilateral institutions are highly visible challenges to the international order that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

 

Perhaps of greater consequence, but less obvious, are the fundamental changes taking place in China, where President Xi Jinping has similarly veered dramatically from the core principles that governed the country's political, economic and foreign policies for decades, taking it in a startling new direction.

 

Xi seems to believe such shifts are necessary to turn China into a superpower capable of throwing its weight around the world stage. The implications could shape global affairs for decades to come. Yet in most European capitals, what Xi has wrought remains only faintly recognized — and that’s a danger not merely to the Continent’s economic and security interests, but also to the very ideals it holds dear.

 

Xi, the son of a senior Communist Party politician, talks very much like his predecessors — with pledges of reforms and an emphasis on “peaceful development.”

 

But the China he leads is a very different country than that of the 1990s or 2000s when leaders in the U.S. and Europe hoped Beijing could be teased into opening up and integrating smoothly — and ultimately democratically — into the global order created by the West.

 

Europeans have to decide what role they wish to play in a world spinning in uncertain directions. Perhaps that will entail girding itself for a 21st-century fight for freedom. Or maybe Europe can find a middle path between the U.S. and China, to play the power broker, or even to become a bridge.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/07 October 2020 - - -