As negative views of China grow among those in the United States, Russians have overwhelmingly positive views of their neighbor, recent polls report.
A poll conducted jointly by the think tank of the Chicago Council and the polling firm Levada Center in Moscow on Friday revealed that 74% of Russians have favorable opinions about China, a finding that highlights the growing geopolitical heat between reflecting the two countries. Only 45% had the same feeling about the European Union, and only 39% had a favorable view of the US
This data appears amid a decline in China’s favor in the US. A Gallup poll published earlier this month found that only one in five respondents in the US has a positive opinion of China. It was a drop of one-in-three just last year and a low for reporting since 1979, the year Washington entered into relations with the People’s Republic.
In the decades that followed, the country established itself as a leading economic power, only linked by the US. His military and diplomatic powers also strengthened, and now challenge the status of Washington after the Cold War as the only superpower in the world, which he did with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
While Washington considers Beijing its biggest competitor today, Moscow considers it a strategic partner with which it enjoys the strongest bilateral ties in the history of the two countries.
GREG BAKER / AFP / Getty Images
The Chicago Council-Levada Center poll revealed that Russians see the benefits of closer ties with China, which has played into unprecedented diplomatic, economic and military cooperation.
A majority of 55% of Russians say their country’s relationship with China has the potential to improve Russia’s position in the world, and 57% believe that these ties would become closer over the next decade. Looking back, 56% said that China gets more respect today than it did ten years ago, 42% said the same for Russia and only 9% said so for the US.
And despite widespread perceptions about their unequal relationship, 56% of Russians said Moscow’s growing ties with Beijing would not increase Russia’s dependence on China.
“Russian President Putin’s reorientation away from the West and to Beijing in the wake of the 2014 Crimean annexation seems to have been accepted by the Russian public, if not,” the Chicago Council-Levada Center report said. “Ironically, although the Obama administration planned a turn in Asia in 2009, it may have been the Russians, not the Americans, who succeeded eastward.”
As for the deteriorating ties between the US and China, the Gallup report saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a contributing factor and warned that Asian Americans were facing collateral damage as a result.
“In a year fueled by a pandemic first discovered in China, and perhaps the widespread cyberattack in the US attributed to Russia by the American intelligence community, both China and Russia have reached new lows in Americans’ views, “the report said.
“The findings also coincide with reports of increasing hate crimes against Asian Americans across the United States,” the report said, “something Biden wants to blunt by condemning the anti-Asian speech in a recent executive order and urging the federal government to orders to avoid such language in its operations. ‘
President Joe Biden has repeatedly condemned the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans in the country. At the same time, he largely continued his predecessor’s tough line on China, and his government said it was “deeply concerned” about the World Health Organization’s recent investigation into the emergence of COVID-19 in China.
In contrast, Moscow praised Beijing’s efforts to fight the coronavirus, especially the efforts made by the two countries together.
“Our partnership is truly excellent,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the state-run Tass Russian News Agency on Thursday. “From February, March and April last year, Russian scientists and physicians were in contact with the Chinese partners. The Chinese helped us with individual protective equipment, when there was a catastrophic shortage of it, the Chinese helped us with equipment and medicine. “
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reciprocated the compliments on Friday.
“China and Russia have stood shoulder to shoulder and are working closely together to fight the coronavirus,” Zhao told reporters on Friday. “We helped each other with anti-epidemic materials, shared practical experience without reservation and together did research and development of vaccines and drugs, and worked hand in hand to resist all kinds of ‘political viruses’.”
He praised the cooperation between the two countries.
“This reflects the high level of relations between China and Russia in the new era and the deep friendship between the peoples of the two countries,” Zhao said.