The 21st century is more likely to belong to Beijing than to Washington — at least that’s the view from four key U.S. allies.
Swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, according to recent results from The POLITICO Poll.
Respondents in these countries increasingly see China as a more dependable partner than the U.S. and believe the Asian economic colossus is leading on advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence. Critically, Europeans surveyed see it as possible to reduce reliance on the U.S. but harder to reduce reliance on China — suggesting newfound entanglements that could drastically tip the balance of global power away from the West.
Here are five key takeaways from the poll highlighting the pivot from the U.S. to China.
The POLITICO Poll — in partnership with U.K. polling firm Public First — found that respondents in those four allied countries believe it is better to depend on China than the U.S. following Trump’s turbulent return to office.
That appears to be driven by Trump’s disruption, not by a newfound stability in China: In a follow-up question, a majority of respondents in both Canada and Germany agreed that any attempts to get closer to China are because the U.S. has become harder to depend on — not because China itself has become a more reliable partner. Many respondents in France (38 percent) and the U.K. (42 percent) also shared that sentiment.
Under Trump’s “America First” ethos, Washington has upended the “rules-based international order” of the past with sharp-elbowed policies that have isolated the U.S. on the global stage. This includes slow-walking aid to Ukraine, threatening NATO allies with economic punishment and withdrawing from major international institutions, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council. His punitive liberation day tariffs, as well as threats to annex Greenland and make Canada “the 51st state,” have only further strained relationships with top allies.
Beijing has seized the moment to cultivate better business ties with European countries looking for an alternative to high U.S. tariffs on their exports. Last October, Beijing hosted a forum aimed at shoring up mutual investments with Europe. More recently, senior Chinese officials described EU-China ties as a partnership rather than a rivalry.
“The administration has assisted the Chinese narrative by acting like a bully,” Mark Lambert, former deputy assistant secretary of State for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration, told POLITICO. “Everyone still recognizes the challenges China poses — but now, Washington no longer works in partnership and is only focused on itself.”
These sentiments are already being translated into action.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney declared a “rupture” between Ottawa and Washington in January and backed that rhetoric by sealing a trade dealwith Beijing that same month. The U.K. inked several high-value export deals with China not long after, while both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have returned from recent summits in Beijing with Chinese purchase orders for European products.
Respondents across all four allied countries are broadly supportive of efforts to create some distance from the U.S. — and say they’re also more dependent on China. In Canada, 48 percent said it would be possible to reduce reliance on the U.S. and believe their government should do so. In the U.K., 42 percent said reducing reliance on the U.S. sounded good in theory, but were skeptical it could happen in practice.
By contrast, fewer respondents across those countries believe it would actually be possible to reduce reliance on China — a testament to Beijing’s dominance of global supply chains.
Young adults may be drawn to China as an alternative to U.S. cultural hegemony.
Respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 were significantly more supportive than their older peers of building a closer relationship with China.
A recent study commissioned by the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — a Beijing-based think tank — suggests most young Europeans get their information about China and Chinese life through social media. Nearly 70 percent of those aged 18 to 25 said they rely on social media and other short-form video platforms for information on China.
And the media they consume is likely overwhelmingly supportive of China, as TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, was built by Chinese company ByteDance and has previously been accused of suppressing content deemed negative toward China.
According to Alicja Bachulska, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, younger generations believe the U.S. has led efforts to depict China as an authoritarian regime and a threat to democracy, while simultaneously degrading its own democratic values.
The trend “pushes a narrative that ‘we’ve been lied to’ about what China is," said Bachulska, as "social sentiment among the youth turns against the U.S.”
“It’s an expression of dissatisfaction with the state of U.S. politics,” she added.
There’s a clear consensus among those surveyed in Europe and Canada that China is winning the global tech race — a coveted title central to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s grand policy vision.
China is leading the U.S. and other Western nations in the development of electric batteries and robotics, while Chinese designs have also become the global standard in electric vehicles and solar panels.
“There has been a real vibe shift in global perception of Chinese tech and innovation dominance,” said Sarah Beran, who served as deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Beijing during the Biden administration.
This digital rat race is most apparent in the fast-paced development of artificial intelligence. China has pouredbillions of dollars into research initiatives, poaching top tech talent from U.S. universities and funding state-backed tech firms to advance its interests in AI.
The investment appears to be paying off — a plurality of respondents from Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. believe that China is more likely to develop the first superintelligent AI.
But these advancements have done little to change American minds. A majority of respondents in the U.S. still see American-made tech as superior to Chinese tech, even in the realm of AI.
As Washington and its allies grow more estranged, the perception of the U.S. as the dominant world power is in retreat — though most Americans don’t see it that way.
About half of all respondents in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. believe that China is rapidly becoming a more consequential superpower. This is particularly true among those who say the U.S. is no longer a positive force for the world.
By contrast, 63 percent of respondents in the U.S. believe their nation will maintain its dominance in 10 years — reflecting major disparities in beliefs about global power dynamics between the U.S. and its European allies.
This view of China as the world’s power center may not have been entirely organic. The U.S. has accused Beijing of pouring billions of dollars into international information manipulation efforts, including state-backed media initiatives and the deployment of tools to stifle online criticism of China and its policies.
Some fear that a misplaced belief among U.S. allies in the inevitability of China surpassing the U.S. as a global superpower could be helping accelerate Beijing’s rise.
“Europe is capable of defending itself against threats from China and contesting China's vision of a more Sinocentric, authoritarian-friendly world order,” said Henrietta Levin, former National Security Council director for China in the Biden administration. “But if Europe believes this is impossible and does not try to do so, the survey results may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Metholodgy
The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Feb. 6 to Feb. 9, surveying 10,289 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. Results for each country were weighted to be representative on dimensions including age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.
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