Filipinos divided on views of China — poll

MANILA, Philippines — Similar to several countries across the globe, Filipinos have mixed opinions on China, according to a survey by Washington-based Pew Research Center.

The poll released earlier this week found that 54% of Filipinos have unfavorable views of China while 42% have a favorable opinion of Beijing.

China experienced an 11-point drop on its favorable marking in the Philippines, which was at 53% in 2018.

Beijing received unfavorable views from most of its Asia-Pacific neighbors, such as Japan (85%), South Korea (63%) and Australia (57%).

Pew noted that fewer countries in North America, parts of western Europe and Asia-Pacific view China favorably compared with last year.

In the Philippines, the percentage of people with favorable opinions of Beijing dropped from 63% in 2002 to 42% in 2019.

Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan also recorded declining favorable views of China."

"Opinion of China has also fallen across the region over the course of Pew Research Center’s polling and is now hovering at or near historic lows in each of the countries surveyed," the report read.

Canada and the United States recorded the highest unfavorable opinion of China in Pew's polling history with 67% and 60%, respectively.

This is amid China's ensuing trade tensions with both Canada and the US.

In western Europe, opinion of China is on balance or negative. Greece recorded 51% positive view of Beijing while Spain and Sweden have unfavorable views with 53% and 70%, respectively.

Countries in central and eastern Europe are divided on their opinion of Beijing with Bulgaria, Poland and Lithuania having positive views while Hungary is nearly evenly divided. Slovakia and majority of Czech Republic, on the other hand, have negative views of China.

For the Philippines, the survey was conducted from May 25 to June 22 among 1,035 adult respondents. The poll was conducted through telephone or face-to-face interviews that are either computer-assisted personal interviews or pen and paper interviews.

"For results based on the full sample in a given country, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus the margin of error," Pew said.

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