What Affects China's National Image? A cross-national study of public opinion

Abstract This paper investigates macro-level sources of variations across countries regrading China's national image, as measured by the proportion of the public in each of 35 countries that expressed a favorable view of China in the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Survey. It turns out that several expected factors have no significant measurable impact on China's image: not the extent of strategic ties between China and a given country; not the political system of that country; not the extent of Chinese investment in the country; and not the number of Confucius institutes and classrooms in that country. The only macro-level factor we find to affect China's image in a country is that country's level of economic and social development, as measured by the UN Human Development Index. Controlling for the other factors, publics in poor or developing countries are much more likely to have a favorable image of China than publics in economically advanced countries. Some implications of our findings are discussed. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBenjamin I. Page*Tao Xie is professor at the School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision-making at the Department of Political Science, Northwestern University. For comments and suggestions, we thank Suisheng Zhao and anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Contemporary China, as well as participants at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, 31 March–2 April 2011. Tao Xie gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University. The views expressed in the article are the sole responsibility of the authors. The authors can be reached by email at xietao@bfsu.edu.cn