Counter/Consensus: China's Relations with its Neighbors

1.  China in the Indo-Pacific (Counter)

Love thy neighbor. Narratives around China’s soft power and reputation often juxtapose China and the United States, to the detriment of the former. America is unequivocally more popular than China globally, including in the Indo-Pacific. But looking at trends over the last two years also shows that China has gained ground and become more popular in every world region, including in its own neighborhood. 

China’s image among countries in its own backyard is a mixed bag in absolute terms. The public in several countries in the region holds strongly positive views of China, including in Indonesia and Thailand. Elsewhere public views are decidedly negative, most notably in Japan and South Korea, and to a lesser extent in the Philippines (which we covered in an earlier edition of this briefing available here).

What is not a mixed bag is positive movement in public views of China across world regions. The Middle East saw the most warming of sentiment toward China, presumably due to China’s strong and one-sided support for Palestinians in the Gaza conflict. But from January 2022 onwards, average regional sentiment has been on the upswing everywhere. 

As U.S.-China competition heats up, jockeying for favor among other countries in the APAC region specifically will become more prominent. Favorable public sentiment toward America will necessarily inform regional policymakers’ willingness to provide material, economic, and informational support for U.S. deterrence or warfighting efforts. Conversely, public opinion in China’s favor could make regional political leaders more likely to support Beijing, or to withhold needed territorial access or support from the United States. If there’s a saving grace for Washington, it’s that regional views in China’s backyard remain net-negative, and China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors are a source of ongoing tension. But if the gradual upswing we saw over 2022-2024 proceeds unchecked, America’s next president will confront an even more challenging regional security and geoeconomic landscape.

2.  China-Vietnam (Counter)

What goes up... The recent lovefest between China and Vietnam goes beyond bilateral leaders’ visits and top-down diplomatic communiqués, extending to public opinion on both sides. But trends in our data and ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea lead us to believe that today’s warm relations may hit a natural ceiling. 

The shakeup in Vietnam’s Communist Party leadership in March and April of this year left first the party’s General Secretary To Lam and then General Lương Cường in the presidential seat, while simultaneously sidelining more moderate party members eager to prioritize Vietnam’s economic development. The result has been a tightening of control by the Communist Party of Vietnam, and an accompanying ideological shift toward China and its Communist Party leaders. 

This improvement in relations can be seen on both sides of our bilateral country favorability data. In Vietnam, views have steadily improved from a low point in July-September 2023 — coinciding with Vietnam upgrading ties with the United States much to China’s irritation — to a high point right after President To Lam’s first state visit to Beijing on Aug. 18. In China, sentiment toward Vietnam began at similar lows, but started improving later and seems to have reached its current plateau later as well. 

Sentiment is now hovering around neutral, and is higher than it has been since our tracking began in 2021. But the plateau in sentiment on both sides, along with the fact that maritime territorial disputes now show signs of worsening rather than resolving, lead us to believe that we may be close to a ceiling on positive sentiment between these on-again off-again friends. 

3. China and Malaysia (Consensus)

Underlying sense of Malays. Relations between China and Malaysia are mutually positive with no immediate signs of a shift. Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Malaysia in June on the fiftieth anniversary of the China-Malaysia diplomatic relationship, describing their ties  as “a fine example of relations between the countries in the region.”

However, Malaysia’s maritime oil and gas exploration ambitions and more mixed sentiment toward China under previous administrations show that Malaysian adults may not have quite as solidly positive views of China as vice versa. 

Chinese favorability toward Malaysia has been solidly in net positive territory without major declines for the last three years. There have been blips, such as when a leaked classified letter from China to Malaysia asserted that the latter’s oil and gas exploration infringed on China’s sovereignty. But approval seems to have been hovering around a rosy +30 since mid-2023. 

The view from Kuala Lumpur is somewhat different. Looking backwards, Malaysian favorability toward China declined throughout late 2021 and 2022 under the administration of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Favorability was subsequently hovering around neutral or slightly negative territory when current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim took over and launched a policy of strong engagement with China, to include multiple visits to Beijing, openly praising Chinese President Xi Jinping, and supporting China on Taiwan in a new way. 

Our data shows the fruits of his labor: Malaysian adults’ favorability toward China steadily climbed throughout his tenure, up until the release of the leaked document in late August 2024, at which point net favorability dropped by around 18 points from peak to trough and has yet to recover. While it is unlikely that this single incident will have a lasting impact on the two countries’ relationship, it illustrates that public sensitivities in Malaysia around its right to conduct maritime hydrocarbon exploration are strong. 

Despite the recent blip, we do not believe that a sustained downturn in Malaysia-China relations is imminent. Malaysia’s recently expressed desire to join BRICS (and Anwar’s public comments around the announcement) along with strong infrastructure and investment ties typified by the now on-again East Coast Rail Link are two clear signs of the country’s growing geoeconomic alignment with China that the latest extractive sector sovereignty spat is unlikely to disrupt. 

4.  China and Australia (Consensus)

Surf n’ turf. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Oct. 10 announcement heralding the end of the rock lobster dispute with China comes amid a period of relatively favorable bilateral sentiment: Net favorability of Australia among Chinese adults is hovering in positive territory near the upper end of its range (+30), compared with negative readings over much of 2020-2022. The resolution of a parallel trade dispute involving Australian wine is largely to thank, with negative developments over the course of that dispute in 2020-2021 coinciding with downward-trending Chinese sentiment, and positive ones in 2023-2024 driving a rebound. 

Amid the resolution of the latest dispute, two things are worth noting. First, we have yet to observe an additional uptick in Chinese net favorability in our data nearly two weeks after the Ministry’s announcement. Coming on the back of the resolved wine dispute (and a similar one involving barley), our data suggests that the latest dispute’s resolution may already have been priced into Chinese sentiment, with people inferring from the prior year’s progress that remaining trade dispute dominoes would soon fall. 

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the uptrend in net favorability we’ve observed over the past year has been driven by rising shares of Chinese adults saying they are uncertain of their views of Australia — now holding steady at a plurality — as opposed to a substantial increase in the share holding favorable views or a decline in the share holding unfavorable ones.

The implication we take from this is that despite improving trade relations, Chinese sentiment remains quite malleable and could easily swing back in the other direction. For Australia, the near-term risks are limited: While Canberra is headed for an election in the near future, both the Labor and Liberal parties have erred on the side of striking a conciliatory tone on bilateral relations. But heightened uncertainty among the Chinese public will offer Beijing ample opportunities to leverage state-owned media to sway the views of a large swath of the population back toward negative territory, should bilateral relations again go awry. 

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