democracyarsenal.org: China Won't You Blow Your Horn

May 29, 2007

China Won't You Blow Your Horn
Posted by Suzanne Nossel

A new poll out today by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org reveals that most of the world think China is on its way toward matching the US's economic power, and that people don't much care. Of the 15 countries surveyed, pluralities in 12 believe that the Chinese economy will grow as large as the US's. Among the populations most skeptical of Beijing's rise is China's own: only 50 percent of Chinese surveyed believed their economy will equal the US's. Only in the Philippines and India were the public's more bearish on China than China's own. The full poll results are here.

In no country, including the US, did a plurality judge the inevitability of China's ascent as more negative than positive. In the US just one in three see China's rise as mostly a matter of concern. More than half of Americans are neutral on the subject. Reactions in Poland, India and Russia are likewise split to indifferent. As Steven Kull, the poll's editor put it: "despite the tectonic significance of China catching up with the US, overall the world's public response is low key - - almost philosophical."

The results do not suggest a global lovefest for the Chinese. Publics in 10 of the 15 countries surveyed say they don't trust China to "act responsibly in the world," and an equal number make the same judgment of the US. The pollsters are quick to point out that this is not just rote distrust of superpowers: 10 out of 16 countries polled about Japan think that country can be trusted to lead responsibly.

What to make of this? I am not going to mount a lengthy exegesis on the evolution of global attitudes toward the US, but based on the trends I've seen, I attribute these latest results - at least in part - to Iraq.

Why Iraq?

It's been documented by the Program on International Public Attitudes (www.pipa.org) that global perceptions toward the US declined as a result of the Bush Administration's foreign policies and specifically the Iraq war. The prolongation of the war has turned what might have been a dip into a deep downturn, such that those who might once have put American global leadership on a pedestal - the crowds that thronged Bill Clinton or named babies in small villages after Ronald Reagen - no longer do. That American global leadership is no longer glorified has made the Chinese look much better by comparison.

To the extent that Washington policymakers rely on the inherent appeal of what they regard as American values to secure their global leadership role, the results suggest that power may be on the wane. Iraq has tarnished global perceptions of what it means to promote liberty and democracy around the globe. That the US purports to be out to promote freedom whereas China is preoccupied with securing its access to natural resources doesn't seem to make much difference in the eyes of the beholders.

Iraq has also contributed to the aura of American vulnerability underlying the poll results. During the late 1990s, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine coined the US the world's first "hyper-power." No one talks that way any longer. American military power has been strained to a degree no one would have imagined possible, and the sense of weakness has carried over. Though the American economy is strong, its no longer seen as unstoppable or untouchable in the way it might have been five years ago. Meanwhile, of course, the Chinese economy has grown at a steady clip and Beijing no appetite for assuming complex global responsibilities that might weigh them down in similar ways.

The most intriguing finding in the poll is the Chinese public's doubts about their own growing economic power. Is this the modesty of a hungry population that doesn't yet take its global stature for granted - - or do they know something we don't?

May 29, 2007 at 04:24 PM | Permalink

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May 29, 2007

China Won't You Blow Your Horn
Posted by Suzanne Nossel

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May 29, 2007

China Won't You Blow Your Horn Posted by Suzanne Nossel

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China Won't You Blow Your Horn
Posted by Suzanne Nossel