Several public opinion surveys published over the last few months paint a picture of China’s role in the world from the perspective of both Chinese and international respondents. Huang conducted studies during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and concluded that the Chinese public “widely and significantly overestimates China’s global reputation and soft power,” adding that “informing Chinese citizens of actual international public opinion of China substantially corrects their factual perceptions of the country’s global reputation.”Outside of China, surveys show mixed results about public opinion on China. Andrew Chubb at the Asia Society Policy Institute published a report last week on this topic, using 25 years of aggregated global public opinion survey data across 159 countries. But today, more name China than the U.S. [Source]To the extent that these surveys demonstrate a slight improvement in global public opinion towards China at the expense of the U.S., this reflects natural changes in public perceptions regarding how each country has acted on the international stage. (Both the U.S. and Chinese governments have leveraged AI to target overseas audiences in global influence operations against each other.)