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Public Perceptions of International Leadership in China and the United States

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Abstract

Many fear that with Trump taking the helm, the United States will scale back its international leadership role in global governance, leaving a void that is too big for any single country to fill. Others are hopeful that emerging powers such as China will be able to step in and provide international leadership to solve global governance challenges, from climate change to nuclear nonproliferation. In this study, we explore the Chinese and American publics’ perceptions and views on international leadership in the Trump era. Results from two parallel surveys conducted in China and the United States shed light on how ordinary citizens in these two countries conceptualize international leadership and how their views contrast with conventional wisdom and with each other. Given the increasingly larger role played by public opinion in the foreign policies of both democratic and authoritarian countries, the findings of this study will have important policy implications.

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Notes

  1. Government sometimes may drive public opinion to strengthen its bargaining position (Weiss 2014). The strategic manipulation of public opinion is more likely in China, given the government’s control over information (Keefe 2002); however, the rise of the Internet and social media has made it easier for news to spread and spark online outrage, forcing Chinese leaders to react (Shirk 2014).

  2. Due to political sensitivity, in the Chinese survey “universal human rights” was changed to “global justice.”

  3. For brevity, we only report the key findings from these models. Full estimation results are available upon request.

  4. Concerning environmental leadership, it would be interesting to consider whether news about the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement would change anything in this regard.

  5. For this question, respondents could pick more than one country.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by University of British Columbia's Hampton Research Grant (Grant no. F14-01146).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, C425-1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada

    Stefano Burzo & Xiaojun Li

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  1. Stefano Burzo
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  2. Xiaojun Li
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Correspondence to Xiaojun Li.

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Burzo, S., Li, X. Public Perceptions of International Leadership in China and the United States. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 3, 81–99 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-017-0076-9

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