Latest Poll Results: China Now More Popular than the US

Latest Poll Results: China Now More Popular than the US

China has grown more popular than the United States, according to a recently released survey that involved more than 24,000 people around the world about whether countries and the European Union affected the world for good or for ill.

China has long been popular in Kenya and Nigeria, where most people surveyed said the country has a positive influence, but jumped its popularity lately in Canada, Australia, Britain and other countries, according to the GlobeScan poll.  The survey was done in cooperation with the University of Maryland for the BBC World Service. Half of the people polled outside China said the country has a positive effect to the world.

A majority of the people who said China has a positive effect credited its economy, products and services for their opinion. "It is Chinese economic assistance to these countries and their closer economic ties with China that have improved China's popularity in these countries," Su Hao of China Foreign Affairs University told China Daily.

Yet its economic influence was also the top reason given by people who said China hurt the world, followed by “the way China treats its people” and foreign policy.

Surprisingly, the U.S. dropped slightly in popularity compared to that of last year, based on the poll’s result, with 47% of people surveyed outside the country saying it had a largely good influence.

The U.S. has become much less popular in Nigeria than it used to be, and it has also lost points in Russia, Chile and South Korea.  The main reason people gave for disliking the U.S. was its foreign policy.  European countries also fell.

Japan was declared the most popular country of all, which overtook Germany in the ranking this year with 58% of respondents saying it had a mainly positive effect to the world. The only place polled where Japan was truly unpopular was in China, where only 16% of respondents said it had a good influence.

The overall rankings, based on the percentage of people who said the country or countries had a positive effect, in descending order were: Japan, Germany, Canada, Britain, China, France, the European Union, the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa, South Korea, Russia, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran.

Posted by James Fried on Saturday May 19 2012, 5:45 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0