Pew Poll Gives New Fodder To U.S. Politicians Criticizing China Over Pandemic

If it wasn’t bad enough for Sino-U.S. relations that the China’s reputation among Americans had already fallen to an all-time low in a Pew Research Center survey in March, a new poll out this week has found even more additional negative trends and expectations for the future.

 

A survey conducted April 29 to May 5 showed that Americans expect China’s international reputation will suffer because of how the country has handled the coronavirus outbreak, Pew said. They also overwhelmingly don’t trust Chinese government information about the pandemic, the survey found.

 

The new poll seems likely to further embolden U.S. politicians including President Trump and likely main rival Joe Biden to criticize China ahead of November presidential and congressional elections over trade practices and transparency of its handling of the Covid-19 outbreak. China’s heated ripostes from “wolf warrior”-style spokesmen have helped to push relations to one of the lowest levels since the U.S. and China formed diplomatic relations four decades ago.   The new Pew poll was taken before China’s passage of a new Hong Kong security law this week that, according to critics, effectively ends the “one country, two systems” policy in place there since 1997; China says the new security rules are good for Hong Kong's economy.

 

U.S.-China relations are “in a very bad spot,” former U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus told CNN on Tuesday. “In an election year, people do crazy things. They say crazy things to get re-elected. Clearly, the rhetoric in D.C. today among those in the Congress who want to get re-elected is to bash China.”

 

The stakes and scale of the conflict are big for businesses.  The world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economies are struggling to fully recover from the global pandemic; a coordinated response could help. Though the U.S. is encouraging American companies to move supply chains out of China, surveys by U.S. business groups show that many wish to remain.  Among the many American businesses with investments in China are GM, Starbucks, Microsoft, Intel and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.  Socially minded Starbucks last month said just it would team up with Sequoia Capital China to make new investments in the country. (See related story here.)

 

According to Pew, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe China has not handled the global pandemic well, rating its performance as the worst alongside Italy among the six countries asked about in the April and May survey.  More give China the lowest possible rating – poor – for its dealings with the coronavirus than they do any other country (37%, compared with 27% who said the same of Italy), Pew found.

 

Americans are also skeptical of official information from the China.  More than eight in 10 Americans distrust information from Beijing about the coronavirus outbreak, including nearly half who have no trust in it at all, Pew said.

 

Doubts about information disclosure underlie Senate passage of a law this month that could lead to delisting of Chinese businesses from U.S. exchanges that are state-owned or fail to meet the same disclosure standards of American companies. A recent accounting scandal at Nasdaq-traded coffee chain Luckin Coffee cost investors billions. Notable Chinese companies listed in the U.S. include Internet heavyweights Alibaba, Bilibili and JD.com.