Counter/Consensus: Chinese Soft Power, AI Fear, India-Pakistan Tensions and Dueling Dynasties in the Philippines

1. U.S.-China Competition (Consensus)

Make China Great Again. This week we published a detailed analysis of a trend we first highlighted in this briefing a few weeks back: China is now outpacing the United States when it comes to each country’s global standing. The chart below illustrates this dynamic through the lens of our daily country favorability data, which measures net favorability of the United States and China across 41 other countries, presented here as an unweighted global average. 

While our global 41-country data set bears this trend out back to January 2022, we find it also holds across a smaller set of 13 “core markets” which Morning Consult has tracked continuously on a daily basis going back to late 2020, marking the tail end of the first Trump administration and the last time America’s reputation was under water in our data set.

An alternative look at the data through the lens of relative favorability — specifically whether views of China in a given country are more or less positive than views of the United States, corresponding to pro-China and pro-U.S. sentiment, respectively — tells an equally striking story. Among our 41 daily tracking markets beyond the United States and China, 29 of them were relatively pro-U.S. as of Jan. 1, 2025, with Israel leading the pro-U.S. camp and Russia leading the pro-China contingent. By contrast, as of April 30, only 13 countries remained in the pro-U.S. camp, speaking to the damage to America’s reputation the past few months have wrought and signaling a dramatic reversal of fortunes relative to a similar assessment we conducted in 2022.

If there is a silver lining visible in our data, it’s that America’s global standing has recently begun to rebound, coinciding with the Trump administration’s 90-day reciprocal tariff pause. This suggests that global views of America remain mutable. And global leaders cannot afford not to work with the United States. Washington’s interests, and those of its allies, also broadly remain the same, and so we expect that cooperation will continue in many respects. 

But other factors are also at play that could sustain longer-term harm to America’s reputation, ranging from public discontent with the United States’ retrenchment on the global stage to its decision to withdraw from multilateral and plurilateral organizations and accords. Should drivers such as these extend the impact of tariffs on the United States’ global standing, they could ultimately pose non-trivial risks to American soft power that long outlast the trade war.

2. Global AI threat perceptions (Consensus)

Neural network neurosis. Morning Consult’s AI fear gauge uses monthly survey data gathered in 19 key markets to assess global consumers’ level of threat perceptions stemming from artificial intelligence. In each market, we ask respondents whether AI is a major or minor threat to their country, or not a threat at all.  

Looking across markets, consumers in many highly developed countries like the United States see a high level of threat perception associated with AI, while those in many developing countries are lower on the gauge. This may stem from public perceptions that large language models (LLMs) and AI tools built on top of them will primarily automate away white collar jobs, which form a larger portion of the workforce in highly developed countries. Though there are exceptions: South Africa has one of the highest readings on the fear gauge, while South Korea and Japan have relatively low readings compared with developed markets in Europe and North America. 

Recent academic research shows that trust in AI companies is negatively correlated with support for more regulation of the sector: People who trust the industry less (and who trust the government more) are more likely to favor heavy-handed approaches to regulating the technology. We see this dynamic at the national level, with countries that have higher readings on the AI fear gauge correlating with those markets where consumers say they have lower trust in the technology industry writ large. This poses policy risk for AI companies and for others building products that rely on AI in markets where trust is low. 

Fear of new technologies has a major influence on consumer adoption of new ones like artificial intelligence. From the perspective of employment concerns, higher threat perceptions among the public can meanwhile be associated with support for policies to prevent or remediate job loss caused by AI. Specifically, concerns over automation can increase popular support for redistributive policies like compensation and more generous unemployment benefits. Additionally, higher fear of AI is also associated with public support for more government regulation of it, although other factors like trust in government can moderate this relationship. 

With geopolitical rivals China and the United States situated on opposite ends of the AI fear gauge, public acceptance and adoption will play into the technological arms race that will determine the shape of global power politics in the coming years and decades. Understanding the demographic profiles of those who express trepidation about AI — as we explore further in our recent analysis — can help guide businesses that are incorporating AI into their public-facing products, regardless of which side ultimately prevails.

3. India and Pakistan (Consensus)

Low and falling. On April 22, a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, killed 26 civilians. India maintains that the Kashmiri separatist group claiming responsibility for the attack is in fact affiliated with Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba, and India launched retaliatory strikes on May 7, targeting infrastructure across the Line of Control. Pakistan responded with missile and drone strikes on Indian military positions. The escalation marked the most intense military exchange between the two countries in decades. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire came into effect on May 10. Despite initial violations reported by both sides, the ceasefire has held. 

But these two perennial enemies are not back to even the previous tenuous normal. Our data shows that mutual regard fell from already low levels to plumb new depths in the midst of the crisis. In Pakistan in particular, views dropped around 50 points peak to trough since April 22. Indian views of Pakistan were resting at a lower equilibrium, but also managed to slide around 20 points. We also see virtually no signs of a rebound despite the fragile ceasefire, indicating that mutual animosity remains high. 

New Delhi has tightly curated the information environment around the crisis, making trends in Indian public sentiment more a symptom than a cause of the current crisis. Nevertheless, the Indian government in particular risks backing itself into a political corner by stoking public opinion to a fever pitch and making it more difficult to climb down without credibly declaring victory or resorting to high-risk military operations. That might be why, despite neither Modi nor Trump initially wanting third-party mediation, the United States nevertheless eventually intervened. Modi has since issued a statement crediting bilateral military contacts, and not U.S. mediation, with the pause in hostilities. Islamabad, which has more of an interest in internationalizing the conflict, has meanwhile publicly welcomed U.S. mediation by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The 2024 Pakistani general elections were widely seen as a major setback for the country’s military establishment. Despite alleged efforts to favor the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N) and suppress the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), PTI-affiliated independents won a majority of seats. The result was broadly interpreted as a public rebuke of military interference in politics, triggering a legitimacy crisis for the armed forces. In this context, the military leadership — particularly Army Chief General Asim Munir — may have seen strategic value in a limited escalation. A week before the Kashmir attacks, Munir publicly reaffirmed the two-nation theory and referred to Kashmir as the "jugular vein of Pakistan," echoing a hardline stance. Modi’s Hindu nationalist platform, from the Pakistani military’s perspective, likely reinforces the belief that Muslim-majority Kashmir cannot remain permanently under Indian control.

While the current ceasefire may hold, the underlying dynamics of the India-Pakistan relationship appear to have subtly shifted. The latest escalation suggests not just a tactical flare-up, but a new, more volatile normal — one defined by increasingly militant posturing on both sides.

4. Philippines (Consensus)

Dueling Duterte. The outcome of the recent Philippine midterm elections — which saw candidates aligned with incumbent President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos pick up fewer seats than anticipated (only six of 12) — bodes well for Vice President Sara Duterte, whose impeachment trial is set to begin in July. Though nominally part of the same administration, sparring between the Duterte and Marcos camps has persisted for well over a year as the two sides jockey for political influence. With Sara Duterte next in line for the presidency — and Marcos set for future political persecution — if the impeachment trial plays out in VP Duterte’s favor, the stakes are high.

As many have suggested, successive clapbacks by Marcos targeting both Sara Duterte as well as her father and former president, Rodrigo Duterte, appear to be at least partly to blame for Marcos’s current fortunes. Per our daily leader approval tracker data, all three periods when Marcos’s approval rating saw notable downswings over the course of his presidency have coincided with prominent bouts of sparring with the Duterte clan, including the trading of drug use allegations in mid-2024, assassination threats lodged by Sara Duterte in November of that year, and Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest by the International Criminal Court in March 2025, which was sanctioned by Marcos. Following these developments, Marcos is currently faring far worse compared with our tracking of Rodrigo Duterte’s approval rating during any point in his presidency when our tracking was active, and despite a recent rebound in the run-up to the midterm elections. Duterte has meanwhile won the mayoral seat he contested while under detention in the Hague by a wide margin.

What is striking about the episodes of dynastic sparring highlighted in the chart above is that Marcos’s approval rating has suffered even when the sparring was initiated by the Duterte clan, as was the case with the drug use allegations, or clearly two-sided,  as in Duterte’s claim she feared assassination and would have Marcos killed if she were. This suggests that neither playing the strongman nor the victim is likely to do Marcos any favors as the impeachment trial gets underway.

Marcos still has several years left in his term. But with sparring between the two clans only likely to accelerate as the ICC and impeachment trials proceed, we see little opportunity for Marcos to right the ship in his favor given how past episodes have played out. If Marcos does, as expected, fail to prevent a Duterte comeback, it's likely to be a net negative development for U.S.-Filipino relations, as the erstwhile president viewed the United States as an unreliable ally and worked to pull Manila closer to Beijing.