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Posted via Arthur Kaufman | April 10, 2024
Recent public opinion polls in the Global South show a slight shift in attitudes toward China and the United States. By small but significant margins, a growing number of people in many of those countries appear to favor China over the United States. This seems to be due at least as much to the belief that the U. S. government has been hypocritical about Israel’s war in Gaza and lacks a compelling global vision for the future, as it is to China’s active diplomatic engagement in the world. For some, surveys only show a snapshot in time; for others, they reflect a deeper trend of global disillusionment with the “U. S. -led foreign order. “China is content to exploit this merit in one way or another.
On Monday, Samuel Wendel of the Washington-based news site Al-Monitor published a poll showing that among Middle Eastern countries, China has the most while the United States has declined according to many signs in the context of Israel’s war in Gaza:
The Global Policy Survey, conducted among 2,670 other people in Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia and Turkey, was conducted through Al-Monitor in partnership with knowledge and analytics firm Premise between March 4 and 22, 2024. When asked which global leader respondents viewed most favorably among Putin, Biden, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a plurality of four, four, four percent chose the Russian leader, compared to 21. 7 percent for the U. S. commander-in-chief [and 33. 8 percent for China’s Xi Jinping]. An October 2023 poll by the Arab American Institute found that, for Biden, the Arab American electorate had fallen from 59% in 2020 to just 17%.
[. . . ] Respondents are divided on which country will be the most influential in the Middle East in 10 years: the United States (29%) is at an impasse with China (28. 9%) and ahead of Russia (23. 3%).
[. . . ] When asked which country(ies) they would like to forge closer ties with, China tops the list with 43. 2%, followed by Russia with 39. 7% and the United States with 29. 7%. [Source]
– Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) April 8, 2024
Gaza also has an effect on other parts of the south. Last week, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s ASEAN Study Centre released its annual State of Southeast Asia 2024 survey, based on responses from approximately 2,000 Southeast Asians from diverse professional backgrounds. The poll showed a notable decline in U. S. influence and an increase in China’s favorable outlook, correlated with widespread complaints about Israel’s war in Gaza:
The clash between Israel and Hamas (46. 5 percent) and the competitive habit in the South China Sea (39. 9 percent) are the most sensible geopolitical considerations in the region, followed by the Russia-Ukraine war (39. 4 percent) and global fraudulent operations (39. 4 percent). , tied for third. The implications arising from the January 2024 elections in Taiwan rank last (7. 6%).
A large proportion [plurality, 41. 8%] of respondents in Southeast Asia are concerned that the Israeli assault on Gaza has gone too far. The increase in extremist activities (29. 7 per cent), the reduction of acceptance as certain in foreign law. and rules-based order (27. 5 percent) and erosion of national social team spirit (17. 5 percent) are the most serious effects of the Israel-Hamas standoff in Southeast Asia.
[. . . ] China remains the most influential economic (59. 5%) and political-strategic (43. 9%) force in the region, ahead of the United States by significant margins in both areas. Among the 11 ASEAN discussion partners, China (average score of 8. 98 out of 11. 0) tops the rating in terms of strategic relevance to ASEAN, followed by the United States (8. 79) and Japan (7. 48). The least strategically applicable partners are: India (5. 04), Canada (3. 81) and New Zealand (3. 70).
[. . . ] China would overtake the U. S. in the top pick (50. 5%) if the region was forced to align itself with the existing U. S. -China rivalry.
In an article touting the survey results, Chinese state media CGTN quoted Danny Quah, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, as saying that U. S. stocks in recent years have shaken perceptions of Southeast Asians. Wu Xinbo, dean of Fudan University’s School of International Studies, also said, “To some extent, the damage done to America’s foreign reputation by the confrontation in Gaza is no less than the war in Iraq. “
Sebastian Strangio, The Diplomat’s Southeast Asia editor, agrees. He wrote that the poll “testifies to the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian clash is politically vital in the Muslim-majority countries of Southeast Asia, the intensity of global outrage over Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza’s civilian population, and how it has inflamed perceptions and undermined Washington’s claim that it stands for a lax and open ‘rules-based external order. ‘
That said, Strangio, Quah and others have pointed out the limitations of ASEAN research. Quah told Nikkei Asia that the underlying knowledge may seem “more like an inflection trend than a trend. “Sharon Seah, lead author of the report, wrote: “Perhaps sentiment has shifted to China as the peak date for the region, but it remains to be seen whether the recent trend of declining respect for the U. S. strategy of this partnership will mark a sea change in regional geopolitics.
Indeed, Seah is under pressure that a key conclusion “is that as the geopolitical environment becomes more volatile, the [ASEAN] region must build its internal resilience” to “defend the tension of the two wonderful forces. “Concept of agency, the U. S. Institute of Peace has published a series of essays on how ASEAN countries are responding to the wonderful rivalry of forces between the U. S. and China, highlighting the fact that many ASEAN countries are protecting themselves between the two superforces. Two recent articles in this series focus on Myanmar and Singapore.
– Evan Feigenbaum (@EvanFeigenbaum) April 10, 2024
On Monday, The Economist published an article stating that it is unclear whether China or any other country has a genuine mandate to lead the Global South. However, the article does present a clue about the states’ “capacity for formal bilateral influence” in the G77 (or, as its explanatory chart is titled, “how to make friends”), which shows that China will likely eclipse the United States in the next few years, two decades, in its current trajectories:
China wields the most influence in 31 countries. Its influence is greatest in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, and several Southeast Asian states. By contrast, the South’s second-toughest member, India, comes out on top with only six members of the G77. According to previous research by [creator of the index], the Pardee Center for the International Future], from 1992 to 2020, the number of countries over which China had more influence than the United States nearly doubled, from 33 to 61. The United States remains the leading country in the Americas, but China has expanded its influence in Africa and Asia. [Source]
Right now, “China is winning the diplomatic race,” as Ryan Neelam wrote last month in a Financial Times op-ed. He noted that at the end of 2023, China had more diplomatic posts (274) than the United States (271). and a larger diplomatic footprint than the United States in Africa (60:56 diplomatic posts), Northeast and Southeast Asia (44:27), the Pacific Islands (9:8), and Central Asia (7:6). Neelam argued that China’s presence of diplomatic merit is particularly influential given that countries in the Global South prefer neutrality and distrust the existing Western order:
But even if [the “rules-based liberal foreign order”] is still prevalent in the West, it is not a central governing force in much of the emerging world. Many of these countries are adopting a more pragmatic approach to balancing their interests. Most are blatantly seeking to choose between superpowers.
Diplomatic networks are the most important thing in these countries. For them, a position symbolizes commitment and investment. Without a presence on the ground, it is more difficult for an outside force to maintain deep relationships with decision-makers. In this sense, the relative regional weight of the diplomatic networks of the United States and China is revealing.
[. . . ] After all, international relations are a long-term game: they are an investment in relationships to exert influence when needed. In regions accustomed to being courted through marvelous powerhouses, consistency matters.
In this area, China has an inherent advantage. Over time, it has been able to direct its diplomatic resources to regions of strategic importance, without the ups and downs of attention that have rarely hindered the influence of liberal democracies, which are likely to change their political priorities. [Source]
For several analysts, China’s merit in public belief in the Global South will have to be contrasted with the upheavals of the Western-led order. Steve Tsang highlighted this point on Monday’s episode of the China-MENA podcast with Jonathan Fulton, discussing how countries will respond to China’s foreign policy and its vision for the future:
The Chinese technique presents many disorders in this area, but the disorders projected through the Chinese formula want to be contextualized in relation to the disorders that the Western-led global order also faces. We also have a lot of messes. The ethical superiority of democratic countries, widely assumed at the beginning of the Cold War, has largely disappeared. Part of the explanation for this is that we have observed democratic regressions in some primary Western countries. [. . . ] also because expectations in the so-called Global South have changed. Previously, other people were much more willing and willing to settle for the criteria set through Western democracies being the gold standard, and [now] we have countries in the Global South that don’t do that [anymore].
[. . . That China represents a greater future for the world is the message Xi Jinping conveys to the Global South, and he has much more than we are sometimes willing to acknowledge. [Source]
Cobus van Staden highlighted a point in a podcast episode of the China-Global South project last month, in which he argued that China’s strategic merit in the Global South lies in a part of its vision for the future that the U. S. political status quo lacks:
[I]n any aspect of the [2024] U. S. election, whether it’s the MAGA aspect or the Democratic Party aspect, the views are necessarily nostalgic. Essentially, they’re hunting backwards. In the MAGA aspect of a made-up edition of the 1950s and in the Democratic aspect of the New Deal, and in the quest to recapture some of the benefits that have been lost over time due to neoliberalization in America, I think this is a moment where we stand, in the Global North in general.
There isn’t much positive long-term commitment. There is a lot of pessimism about the long term. And within that, many popular things emerge, reminiscent of other types from beyond. China has no more than funny that I can remember. China’s future has been difficult. And that’s why, in many tactics, it is more long-term oriented. And I think that in many tactics it is also on the same page as the Global South, because the Global South, in general, has a very young population. So just the absence of any kind of articulated long-term vision, even though [China] is, as you say, absolutely vaporware, just the fact that none of it, or very little of it, comes from the United States, beyond enclaves. within world-class business environments, like futuristic AI or CRISPR taste gene editing, that kind of thing. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s Google’s top walls, for example, right? It is not shared. This is not a shared long term. I think this is playing out nationally, in Europe and the United States, and also spreading to the rest of the world. [Fountain]
Even in U. S. opinion polls, China has gained ground while the U. S. has declined. A Gallup poll released last month found that “China’s 20% favorable ratings this year are higher than 15% in 2023” and that “[t]he 5% naming the United States as the nation’s greatest enemy is the score Gallup has recorded since it first asked this question in 2001. “
As early as November, Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post warned that the Global South would view the United States as “complicit” in Israel’s abuses in Gaza and therefore view China favorably:
Anger at Washington has given Russia and China the opportunity to present themselves as defenders of the Palestinians, reinforce their symbol in the emerging world, and use their propaganda media to magnify the link between the U. S. -Israeli movements in Gaza.
[. . . ] “There’s something going on in terms of reaction to this crisis that’s unlike anything I may have seen in recent years, maybe even going back to the Gulf War and other episodes of U. S. policy in the Middle East,” Maloney said. . Director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.
“There is a feeling” in emerging countries that there is “twice as many victims,” he said.
Categories: China & the World,Article 2
Tags:armed conflict, ASEAN, Asia, Chinese diplomacy, competition, diplomacy, economic influence, global influence, global influence, international relations, israel, middle east, Palestine, public opinion, Southeast Asia, survey, Western values