As U.S. Views Of China Grow More Negative, Chinese Support For Their Government Rises

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Public opinion surveys show that Chinese and U.S. respondents show increasingly negative attitudes toward each other’s countries. In China, reported levels of satisfaction with the Chinese government have grown.

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Economic and political incentives encourage state and private media outlets to play up eye-catching headlines that depict the U.S. as a failed state, he says.

«Nationalistic content has a potential to bring in more followers and more engagement, which means more advertising revenue, more investment,» he says. «You publish a lot of nationalism posts and the Communist Party is happy and you get tons of likes and shares.»

Increasingly negative U.S. attitudes toward China may only boost Chinese citizens’ positive attitudes toward their own political system, some research suggests.

Scholars at Stanford University and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong province published a study in June finding that Chinese students in the United States expressed more support for their own government if they encountered critical or racist news coverage of China.

«Chinese students who study in the United States are more predisposed to favor liberal democracy than their peers in China,» the authors wrote. «However, anti-Chinese discrimination significantly reduces their belief that political reform is desirable for China and increases their support for authoritarian rule.»

Amy Cheng contributed research from Beijing.

• public opinion
• China