China gains ground in its global image

World
Europe

By CGTN's Dialogue

The latest Pew Global Survey shows China and the United States neck-and-neck in a global popularity contest. In sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, there have been dramatic shifts in favorable views towards China while Western Europe is increasingly seeing China, rather than the US, as the global economic leader.

“In African countries, we see China as a hope,” Hannah Ryder, China representative of the China Africa Advisory, told CGTN’s Dialogue.

Meanwhile, “in countries like the UK, there is an increasing feeling that globalization isn’t working and maybe China is a new path,” she noted.

Clare Pearson, chair of the CSR Forum at the British Chamber of Commerce in China, agreed that “there is a complete shift in the global economic center of gravity towards China.”

“Whereas before people were looking to the US for their biggest market and business in the next five to 10 years, today the global middle class is going to be Chinese, and people are looking to China to keep their company buoyant in the next decade."

The Pew survey found China received the most positive ratings in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

However, Africa may still need some time to fully embrace China.

The continent was still in many ways used to a way of life and work established under the former colonial powers, according to James Arusi Atanga, sub editor for the South Sudan Broadcasting Cooperation.

The Chinese arriving in Africa now have introduced “a new ideology, a new way of life, a new way of working.” For the local population, it is “so complex that they cannot transform immediately… to follow the Chinese mode of working. So that has brought a conflict,” said Atanga.

Dialogue with Yang Rui is a 30-minute current affairs talk show on CGTN. It airs daily at 7.30 p.m. BJT (1130GMT), with rebroadcasts at 3.30 a.m. (1930GMT) and 11.30 a.m. (0330GMT).