Personal Memory Bank | In the past year, Chinese people’s perception of the outside world has deteriorated significantly

The world has only been a year, but people’s hearts have changed greatly.

The results of the “Chinese People’s View of International Security” public opinion survey conducted by the Center for Strategic and Security Studies of Tsinghua University last year and this year show that in the past year, Chinese people’s perceptions of the outside world have deteriorated across the board!

Only Russia is basically excluded!

Look at the picture above. Except for the UK, which has no comparative data from last year, among other countries, Russia’s score only dropped by 0.01 point, which can be almost ignored. All other countries have dropped by more than 0.2 points!

The country with the largest drop is Japan, which had the lowest score last year, dropping a full 0.51 points, which is consistent with the atmosphere of Japanese people and Japanese elements encountering a cold wave in the country.

The second highest drop is South Korea, with a direct drop of 0.5 points, but the base is relatively high, so it’s still okay overall.

As for the United States, its score last year was the lowest, the same as Japan, and this time it dropped by 0.34, and its final score is only higher than Japan.

Now, the most developed United States and the most developed Japan in Asia are both thorns in our eyes.

With a total score of 5 points, the scores below 2.5 are the United States, Japan, India, and South Korea.

Behind the overall decline in evaluation is the deterioration of the Chinese people’s security expectations.

Interestingly, the older the age, the less safe they feel. The 18-44 age group is 48.7%, the 45-60 age group is 52.5%, and the over 60 age group is 64.7%.

What about the next ten years (2025-2035)?

73% believe that they should be more proactive, but this is a 5% decrease compared to last year!

It can be seen that there has been some reflection on the wolfishness of these years, after all, foreign trade is like this, affecting everyone’s wallets.

Correspondingly, the public hopes to pay more attention to domestic affairs rather than foreign affairs:

As high as 55.6% believe that foreign aid is too much, an increase of 3.1% compared to 2023, of which the proportion of those who choose “obviously too much” has increased by about 6%.
78.3% of the respondents still agree that China should establish military bases overseas, but the attitude towards allowing “overseas military use” has decreased from 92.57% to 76.82%.

What if a dispute occurs? Different people have different solutions. The elderly and those with lower education levels believe more in “backwardness leads to being bullied” and are more inclined to use strength to resolve disputes.

As shown in the picture above, the proportion of those who believe in strength decreases with education. The proportion is as high as 58.54% for those with junior high school education or below, while it is only 37.76% for those with master’s and doctoral degrees.

The reason should not be difficult to analyze: the ignorant are fearless, and the knowledgeable know their own limitations.

This difference is also reflected in the choice of diplomatic “power”. The group with an annual income of over 100,000, enterprise managers, professionals, and the over 60 age group believe more in economic power, while the group with relatively low annual income, students, etc. prefer cultural power.

Among them, those who choose military power, civil servants are the lowest, and freelancers (unemployed groups?) are the highest, followed by workers and professionals.

Interesting, isn’t it.

But confidence is still high, with 90.7% believing that China’s global influence has increased in the past five years, and 59.1% believing that the United States’ global influence has decreased.

Looking forward to the next ten years (around 2034), the proportion of those who believe in “East rising, West declining” is also very high: 67.24% of the respondents believe that the United States’ position in the world will continue to decline, and 88.99% of the respondents believe that China’s global position will continue to improve, of which 39% believe that it will “rapidly improve”.

Interestingly, we like Russia the most and hate Japan the most, but the first two factors that pose a challenge to our security are related to the United States, namely, the tense Sino-US relations and the intervention of international forces in the Taiwan issue: