A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again.
The 21-country survey for the influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank also found that under Trump, the US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies – particularly in Europe – feel ever more distant.
Most Europeans no longer see the US as a reliable ally and are increasingly supportive of rearmament, it found, while Russians now see the EU as more of an enemy than the US, and Ukrainians are looking more to Brussels than to Washington for support.
The poll, of nearly 26,000 respondents in 13 European countries, the US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, found majorities in almost every territory surveyed expected China’s global influence to grow over the next decade.
These ranged from 83% in South Africa, 72% in Brazil and 63% in Turkey through 54% in the US, 53% in 10 EU states and 51% in India to 50% in the UK. Most EU citizens expected China to soon lead the world in electric vehicles and renewable energies.
Moreover, few seemed concerned about it. The polling found that only in Ukraine and South Korea did majorities view China as a rival or an adversary, while more people in South Africa, India and Brazil saw China as an ally than they did two years ago.
In South Africa (85%), Russia (86%), and Brazil (73%), majorities view China either as a necessary partner or as an ally. The EU view was unchanged: 45% see China as a necessary partner. Many countries expect their relationship with China to strengthen.
At the same time, while many believe the US will remain influential, outside Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey there was no majority – including in the US itself – for the view that American influence was likely to grow any further.
Amid increasingly favourable views of China, the status of the US as an ally has declined across almost all the countries surveyed, with India the only one where a majority still feels the US is an ally, sharing the country’s values and interests.
As other polls have also shown, the change in perceptions of the US among EU citizens is marked: only 16% now consider the US as an ally, with a striking 20% seeing it as either a rival or an enemy. Elsewhere, perceptions of America are in decline.
In most countries, too, the survey showed expectations of Trump himself had fallen, sometimes dramatically. Fewer people felt the US president’s re-election was good for US citizens, their own countries or for peace in the world than 12 months ago.
The survey, the fourth in a series, was carried out with Oxford University’s Europe in a Changing World project. It suggests that with the world’s balance of power shifting, people’s perceptions of Europe are changing too – most notably in Russia.
With the war in Ukraine set to enter its fifth year in February, respondents in Russia are now more likely (51%) to see Europe as an adversary than last year (41%), and less likely (37%) to consider the US as such than they were 12 months ago (48%).
Ukrainians, on the other hand, are more likely to see Europe as an ally (39%) than the US (18%, down from 27% last year). Views of Europe are also changing in China, where 61% of respondents see the US as a threat, but only 19% think the same of the EU.
The report’s authors, Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Mark Leonard of the ECFR and the historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash, said this did not appear to be because Chinese citizens did not take the EU seriously.
In fact, the survey showed that, unlike in many countries, a majority (59%) in China considered the EU to be a great power, with 46% also seeing the bloc as mostly a partner – a view shared, despite Trump’s anti-EU rhetoric, by 40% of Americans.
Optimism about the EU, however, is not shared by many Europeans. Most (46%) do not believe the EU is a power able to deal on equal terms with the US or China, a sentiment that has increased over the past year (up from 42% in 2024).
Many Europeans also doubt the future will bring any good for their countries (49%) or the world (51%), worrying about Russian aggression against their country (40%) and a major European war (55%). More than half (52%) support increasing defence spending.
The authors said the poll revealed “a world in which US actions were boosting China”, adding that Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and territorial ambitions in Greenland suggested “he has decided it is better for a great power to be feared than to be loved”.
“Europe could end up squeezed or simply ignored,” they said, adding: “Political leaders in Europe should no longer ask themselves whether their own citizens grasp the radical nature of the current geopolitical changes. They do.”
Europeans see the old order is over, they said. European leaders must now be “realistic and daring at the same time”, finding “new ways not just to manage in a multipolar world, but to become a pole in that world – or disappear among the others”.
