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57% of Americans Back Friendly Cooperation with China, Poll Finds — But Pew Data Shows Views Still Mostly Negative
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
A survey released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on September 21, 2026 found that 57% of Americans favor a policy of friendly cooperation and engagement with China, rather than confrontation or containment. The finding has recently been cited by Chinese state media, including China Daily, as evidence of a positive shift in American public opinion toward China. The poll, known as the 2026 Chicago Council Survey, was conducted by the nonpartisan, Chicago-based think tank from July 10 to 21, 2026, drawing on a nationally representative sample of more than 2,100 adults across all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
The survey points to a notable shift in American attitudes. Support for cooperation with China among Republican respondents rose by 10 percentage points compared with 2025, reaching its highest level since 2019. A sharp partisan divide nonetheless persists: 63% of self-identified "MAGA" Republicans still favor a policy of containment toward China, while 57% of non-MAGA Republicans now favor cooperation.
The timing of the survey's release carried symbolic weight, coming just ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States from September 23 to 25, 2026. The trip followed Donald Trump's own state visit to China in May 2026 and marked the two leaders' second major in-person engagement of the year. Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were welcomed in Washington by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, with both sides later signaling plans for at least two further meetings before the end of the year, according to U.S. media reports.
Alongside the Chicago Council survey, the Pew Research Center — a long-established, independent authority on American public opinion toward China — published its own findings in September 2026 showing a similar positive movement. The share of Americans holding a favorable view of China rose to 27%, a series high, up six percentage points from the prior year and nearly double the 14% recorded in 2023. The proportion of Americans describing China as an "enemy" fell from 42% in 2024 to 28% currently, while Americans' confidence in Xi Jinping to "do the right thing" in world affairs has roughly doubled since 2023.
A close reading of the two surveys, however, shows they are not measuring quite the same thing, and conflating them risks a misleading picture. The Chicago Council's 57% figure reflects respondents' preference between a policy of cooperation and engagement versus one of containment and confrontation. Pew's 27% figure, by contrast, measures overall favorability toward China. In other words, even as a growing share of Americans favor engagement over confrontation, Pew's own data shows 71% of Americans still hold an unfavorable view of China overall — a nuance that has often gone unmentioned in Chinese state media coverage of the polling.
Analysts broadly attribute the shift to the marked warming in high-level U.S.-China engagement in recent months. Following Trump's state visit to Beijing in May 2026, which produced a series of trade and economic understandings, Xi's reciprocal visit to Washington in late September further reinforced the sense of a bilateral thaw. U.S. outlets including CNBC have reported that both sides have signaled plans for additional meetings later this year, a pattern of frequent top-level contact that observers say is helping to ease American public sentiment toward China.
It is worth noting that the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has conducted its flagship survey on American attitudes toward foreign policy continuously since 1974 and is widely regarded as a credible, nonpartisan research institution, as is the Pew Research Center. This means that while China Daily and other Chinese state outlets have emphasized the finding that "57% of Americans support friendly cooperation with China," the figure itself rests on a legitimate and verifiable survey — it has not been fabricated — even though such coverage has tended to omit the equally significant finding that more than seven in ten Americans still view China unfavorably overall.
Overall, American public opinion toward China appears to be at a delicate and complex inflection point. On one hand, as top-level engagement between the two countries' leaders has intensified and trade tensions have eased, a growing number of Americans — including some previously China-hawkish Republicans — now favor cooperation and engagement over confrontation and containment. On the other hand, broad favorability toward China remains near historic lows, and underlying public skepticism has not dissipated simply because of a handful of high-profile summits. Whether this more positive trend continues will likely depend on whether Washington and Beijing can translate their stated plans for further meetings into substantive, durable cooperation.
In specific terms, when asked to choose between a policy of "friendly cooperation and engagement" with China and one of "actively limiting the growth of China's power," 57% of respondents chose the former and 40% the latter — a clear contrast. While the 57% figure is the highest recorded in Chicago Council polling since 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it remains below the historic high of 68% recorded in 2019, indicating that the warming reflects a correction from 2024's peak in containment sentiment rather than a return to earlier highs. The survey report was led by Craig Kafura, the Council's director of public opinion and foreign policy research, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Commentators noted on social media that, broken down by party, roughly two-thirds of Democratic respondents supported cooperation with China, notably higher than the national average.
Several U.S. media outlets have linked the specific drivers of this polling shift to the package of trade arrangements reached between Washington and Beijing during the September summit. Reports indicate the two sides agreed to mutually cut tariffs on roughly $30 billion worth of "non-sensitive" goods and said they would work toward reducing tariffs on trade worth about $60 billion overall: China pledged to lower tariffs on certain agricultural products, seafood, wood products, cosmetics and medical devices, while the U.S. agreed to cut tariffs on small appliances, toys, holiday decorations and children's car seats. The two sides also agreed to set up an agricultural trade working group, with China's Commerce Ministry saying sector-level talks would begin before the end of 2026, and China committing to import 10 million metric tons of U.S. coal in both 2027 and 2028. Several outlets nonetheless cautioned that the summit produced few major breakthroughs and that the trade truce extension was shorter than markets had expected, characterizing the relationship as a "managed de-escalation" rather than a full-scale thaw.
Several independent U.S. outlets reported on and corroborated the trend as well. According to a separate Pew Research Center "feeling thermometer" survey released around the same time, the share of Americans expressing "cold" feelings toward China fell from 68% in 2021 to 54% currently, while those expressing "warm" feelings rose from 11% to 19%, and those feeling neutral rose from 20% to 27%. The Chicago Council survey also found that the share of Americans viewing China's territorial ambitions as a "critical threat" fell from 52% in 2022 to 41% now. Partisan gaps nonetheless remain stark: 26% of Democrats report warm feelings toward China compared with just 10% of Republicans, while 68% of Republicans report cold feelings compared with 44% of Democrats. Independent U.S. outlets including The Washington Post and Time magazine both noted in their coverage that this wave of warming sentiment coincided closely with the late-September U.S.-China summit, while cautioning that deep-seated public wariness of China in American society persists — meaning the "warming" reflects easing hostility more than a broad embrace of China.
