Pew Global released a report on July 13, 2017, which said that a median of 47% across the 38 countries surveyed have a favorable opinion of China, while 37% express an unfavorable view. Majorities or pluralities in 24 countries give China a positive rating.The most favorable views of China are found in sub-Saharan Africa – a region where China has invested heavily in infrastructure and development. Positive opinions surpass negative ones by a more than four-to-one margin in Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania. In Ghana, 49% have a positive image of China, down 31 percentage points since spring 2015. This may be due, at least in part, to recent frictions between the two countries over mining practices in Ghana. In Latin America, positive sentiment toward China is highest in Peru. Roughly half in Brazil, Venezuela and Chile also have positive feelings about the Asian economic giant. Russians are also positively inclined toward China, with seven-in-ten expressing favorable views of their neighbor. In fact, Russia has the second-most positive opinion of China, after Nigeria. In the United States and Canada, publics have mixed views of China. Canadians are favorably inclined toward China by a 48% to 40% margin, while Americans lean in the opposite direction (47% negative vs. 44% positive). U.S. attitudes toward China have softened since 2016, when 55% had an unfavorable view of the Asian power. There are significant partisan differences in the U.S., with Republicans more likely to have negative views of China (56%) than Democrats (41%).

In the Asia/Pacific region, opinion is mixed. Favorable opinion of China ranges from a high of 64% in Australia to a low of 10% in Vietnam. In Australia, positive views of China have increased 12 percentage points in just the past year (as favorable views of the U.S. have declined 12 points). But favorable opinions of China have also fallen over the past two years in Vietnam (-9 points) and Indonesia (-8). The decline is particularly notable in South Korea, where favorability of China has fallen 27 points since spring 2015 and now hovers near historic lows.