【Text/Observer Network Wang Meng】
According to a poll recently released by Princeton University's Arab Barometer, at least 7 of the nine Arab countries have higher support for China than for the United States. The survey results were first released by the US "Newsweek" on the 10th, and was titled "China surpassed the United States to become the most popular country in the Arab world".
Screenshot of a US Newsweek report
Arab Barometer, a project led by Princeton University's nonpartisan research network, published survey results on the support of people surveyed in nine countries in the Arab region for China and the United States. The polls are based on a survey of nearly 23,000 respondents in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Sudan between October 2021 and April 2022, with a margin of error of about 2 percentage points per country.
"Arab Barometer" survey: China surpassed the United States to become the most popular country in the Arab world
The survey shows that respondents in these countries have higher support for China than the United States, including Sudan, Mauritania, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia and Palestine. Among them, Mauritania's respondents had the highest support for China (63%), corresponding to the United States with 50% of the vote.
Respondents in Sudan, Lebanon, Libya, and Tunisia had an average support of 53 percent for China and 42.3 percent for the United States. It is worth noting that respondents in Morocco have more than 60% support for both countries, but their support for China (64%) is slightly lower than that for the United States (69%). In Jordan, respondents were equally favorable to the United States and China (51% respectively).
Survey results. Pictured from the Arabia Barometer website
The countries with the largest gap in respondents' support for the two countries are Iraq and Palestine, where 54% of respondents in Iraq are more supportive of China than the United States, which has 35% of the support; This figure compares 15 per cent and 34 per cent in Palestine.
Michael Robbins, principal investigator of the Arabian Barometer project, discussed the findings with Newsweek and said: In the Middle East and North Africa, China's image as a great power has once again been established.
"China has stepped in with an advantage, has no regional disputes with these countries, and has made it clear that it wants to remain non-political in the region," Robbins said, adding that "through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has increased the level of economic participation throughout the region."
Because of the U.S. long-standing hegemonic activities in the Middle East and Afghanistan to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, Robbins stressed that "China's political stance of non-intervention may be refreshing for the people of the region."
Teachers and students from China and Lebanon gathered at the Chinese Embassy in Lebanon to celebrate the Chinese New Year friendship activities. The picture is from the Chinese culture website
But while the figures were exposed, some of Newsweek's rhetoric was somewhat distorted, claiming that "Beijing's ambitious outreach campaign has found fertile ground in a region that has been left a difficult legacy by Washington" and that China's efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world have also been challenged because of a degree of skepticism about what China can offer.
According to the "China in the New Era" global poll conducted by the CGTN think tank of CCTV and the Institute of National Governance and Public Opinion Ecology of Chinese Min University, only 6.31% of global respondents believe that the United States will continue to dominate the world.
Global respondents' views on the future world order. Pictured from CGTN
In the process of participating in global governance, China advocates the concept of a "community with a shared future for mankind". Most respondents agreed with the view that "humanity is a coherent and shared destiny, and countries should try their best to find new ways to avoid confrontation and avoid the division of the international community that we experienced during the Cold War era" (61.29%), and countries along the "Belt and Road" and developing countries agreed with this view to a higher degree.
In the survey of countries along the "Belt and Road", respondents listed the impact of the "Belt and Road" on their countries, and the top four were "sharing the fruits of development" (53.65%), "expanding international markets" (51.54%), "enhancing cultural exchanges" (43.01%) and "strengthening infrastructure" (44.47%). Unlike the anti-China hype in the West, only 8.08% of respondents in countries along the "Belt and Road" chose to "set a 'debt trap'".
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