A new survey by Pew Research Centre has found that 31 percent of Chinese people had a favourable view of Pakistan, only slightly better than their opinion of Islamabad’s rival India.
China has since long provided military and economic support Pakistan, whose leaders often praise the relationship with Beijing as time tested. “Pakistani views of China actually tend to be quite positive, but Chinese views of Pakistan are not the same,” Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project said.
The survey, part of a 21-nation study, included 3,177 face-to-face interviews in China in March and April and had a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.
Only 23 percent of Chinese said they held a favourable view of India, with a sharp rise since 2010 in the percentage of Chinese who saw the fellow billion-plus nation as hostile. India and China fought a war in 1962 and tensions have risen in recent years over their borders in two regions. India has for decades offered refuge to Tibetans fleeing Chinese rule, including the territory’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese public, once upbeat about US President Barack Obama, also increasingly sees a hostile relationship with Washington, but most Chinese still admire American democracy. Some 39 percent of Chinese said they believed Beijing’s relationship with the United States was one of cooperation, a sharp drop from 68 percent who said so two years ago, the poll found. Twenty-six percent of Chinese said that US relations were hostile, a jump of 18 percentage points since 2010, with the rest of the public not offering an alternative assessment.
Only 38 percent of Chinese said they had confidence in Obama, a fall from a narrow majority in 2010 but still higher than George W Bush’s approval rating in China before he left the White House. “We’ve seen attitudes towards the US and towards President Obama cool a little bit in different parts of the world since some of the initial enthusiasm that followed his election,” Wike said.
