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reChina’s image in Germany has deteriorated significantly over the past twelve months. According to a recent study by the American Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Germans now have a negative image of the country. That’s 17 percentage points more than a year ago, and it’s also the worst value since the polls began 18 years ago. Similar trends can be seen in the 13 other industrialized countries where Pew researchers asked about attitudes toward China. In eight of them, skepticism about China has risen to an all-time high. The image of China continues to be more positive in Spain and Italy.
By contrast, the image loss is particularly large in Australia, where negative ratings rose 24 points to 81 percent in one year. This is likely related to the economic sanctions Beijing imposed on Australian companies after the Canberra government campaigned for an independent investigation into the causes of the corona pandemic. The dispute over this peaked before the General Assembly of the World Health Organization in May, while Pew’s telephone interviews took place between June and August.
Researchers attribute China’s bad reputation, among other things, to its handling of the corona virus. At the same time, they note that America’s disease control rates significantly worse. Although there have been almost no new infections in China for weeks and travel and parties are now almost unrestricted, its corona balance is rated bad by 61 percent of respondents across the 14 countries.
This is in sharp contrast to the testimony that the Chinese people give to their government in the fight against the disease. The contrast with the self-portrait of Xi Jinping, who said in a speech in September: “With its practical measures, China has helped save the lives of tens of millions of people around the world.” it demonstrated the clear superiority of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system of our country. Presumably those howls of triumph also contributed to Xi Jinping being rated even worse than his country in the Pew study. In Germany, for example, 78 percent of respondents say they do not trust the head of state to do the right thing in global affairs.
Diplomatic difficulty
Other reasons for the growing skepticism towards China are likely to be the crackdown on the protest movement in Hong Kong and the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The confrontation with the United States is also likely to play an important role, as it has also sharpened Europe’s vision on the security challenges emanating from China. Beijing has fueled this skepticism with provocative propaganda videos that simulate an invasion of Taiwan and a bombing of Guam by US troops. Last but not least, the demonstrative confrontational behavior of individual Chinese ambassadors is significant, described in Beijing as “wolf warrior diplomacy” and well received by the Chinese population.
There have long been voices in China warning of the negative effects of such diplomatic battles. As the vice president of the China Institute for International Studies, a State Department think tank, recently wrote in an essay: “Although China has done well in fighting the pandemic, it is a strategic error of judgment to view this as a historic opportunity for the rise of China. If we let populism and extreme nationalism run rampant, the international community could misinterpret it as a China-first strategy. “
Yuan Nansheng went on to write: “Making all sides your enemy is the worst of all diplomatic strategies.” It should be confirmed by the Pew study. However, there is still little evidence that international criticism has made the leadership feel compelled to adopt a more moderate foreign policy. Rather, it seems to see an opportunity to assert its interests with more confidence in the fact that China has coped with the pandemic significantly better economically than other industrialized countries. This, in turn, is consistent with the Pew study’s assessment: despite negative attitudes toward China, most Europeans view China as the world’s most important economic power.
Meanwhile, Chinese propaganda does its best to paint a different picture of China’s soft power. In September, state media announced, citing a study by the London-based market research institute Kantar Group, “China’s national reputation continues to improve.” That is the result of surveys in 22 countries. It was not said which states are involved.
