As China is celebrating the 100 years of its Communist Party, a new Pew Research Center poll is giving the facts: international public opinion on both China's CCP and its ruler, President Xi Jinping remains low. This is despite their local and international attempts at propaganda.
According to Radio Free Asia, a recent Pew Research Center survey asked 18,850 in 17 developed countries earlier this year about their thoughts on China and President Xi. The report concluded, "Large majorities in most of the advanced economies surveyed have broadly negative views of China."
The country with the most negative opinions of China is Japan with 88%, followed by Sweden with 80%, Australia with 78%, South Korea with 77%, and the United States with 76%. In addition, the survey found that all except one of the 17 countries surveyed said that they have "little or no confidence" in President Xi, including more than half of respondents from Australia, France, Sweden and Canada who admitted to having no confidence in him at all.
The report concluded, "Confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping remains at or near historic lows in most places surveyed."
Amidst the controversy facing China's human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and CCP's control over its own people, the report showed that large majorities in countries such as Sweden, the United States, South Korea, Australia, and the Netherlands "believe that the Chinese government does not respect the personal freedom of Chinese people." Over 80% of respondents in these countries also admitted to distrusting President Xi's governance. The results of the Pew survey were released on June 30, a day ahead of China's centenary celebration of the CCP.
"This so-called poll by the Pew Research Center is only made by a handful of countries and people," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin told Bloomberg in defense of the CCP. "They cannot represent the whole international community."
Current affairs commentator Chen Pokong told RFA that the results of the study do not come as a surprise to him, as "The actions of Xi Jinping and the CCP in recent years have resulted in unprecedented international isolation for China."
Chen argued that the images that the state-run media outlets of China chooses to show the world, its song-filled celebrations and energetic festivities are "indicators of an isolated and closed nation."
Democracy activist and Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) consultant Joey Siu added that "all the countries in the free world" know that CCP is building "a new set of 'international norms' of its own" that disregards human rights and does not "respect freedom and democracy."
"But it seems that however much the CCP tries to package this, it's not changing China's image [for the better] internationally very much," Siu said. China has been known to flip the script on other countries, accusing them of what they are being accused of.
On Friday, Wang said that it was the United States who should focus on correcting their "human rights violations such as genocide, racial discrimination and forced labor" on African Americans, reiterating the "unfounded accusations" against China for its human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, the Associated Press reported.
It's worth noting that accusations of China's abuses against religious minorities in the country, such as Christians and Uyghur Muslims, are not "unfounded" as Wang claims. Reports reveal such atrocities to be true.
Wang's words, however, seem to affirm reports that China is using social justice and wokeness to manipulate Americans and sow chaos and discord among people living in the United States of America.
