Trump isn’t the only one reassessing China these days. A trio of recent polls found that Americans also feel markedly more positive about China than they did five years ago, with the largest gains among young people. On average, American sentiment toward China is about the same today as it was 10 years ago — before Trump launched his first trade war.
What changed Americans’ minds about China? There is undoubtedly no one cause. It probably helps that Trump himself has changed his tune, no longer portraying the relationship between the US and China as an existential rivalry between so-called great powers.
Americans’ views on China have also recovered steadily since the Covid-19 pandemic, as memories of that period fade into the rearview. And foreign-policy issues — like, say, the status of Taiwan — generally aren’t top of mind for the average American voter.
But there’s also a cultural component here, particularly for young Americans. “Younger Americans are less wedded to notions of American primacy and more comfortable with coexistence," Ryan Hass, a China scholar at the Brookings Institute, posted on X.
Many young Americans have, in fact, grown up embracing aspects of Chinese culture, from TikTok to Labubu. And there’s a pervasive sense, in some corners, that Western-style capitalism hasn’t precisely delivered the goods.
But let’s not kid ourselves here — China has plenty of problems, too. Like an economic slowdown, a mounting demographic crisis, and a culture of widespread political repression, to name just a few. For now, at least, an increasingly hostile US isn’t one of them.
