The COVID-19 pandemic touched off a global battle of narratives. Chinese propaganda and diplomatic cadres engaged in a fierce struggle over the repression of doctors who tried to raise the alarm and accusations that risky state-sponsored coronavirus research was to blame.

Polls suggested international views of China significantly darkened as a result.

Experts at Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes and Trends were quick to urge caution, pointing out that travel restrictions and social distancing had made survey research in the Global South challenging for many Western-based organizations. But the idea that the world’s opinion of China was collapsing stuck.

Four years on, with the benefit of nearly 900 worldwide surveys since 2020, the Global Public Opinion on China dataset provides an opportunity to assess how the pandemic has affected China’s global image.

The short answer? Less in Europe and North America than commonly assumed, but more in the Global South than you might have thought.

In the United States, the chart above suggests the pandemic was not a turning point but rather an almost seamless continuation of an existing downward trajectory that began in 2018 or early 2019.

This was a time of deepening U.S.-China trade and technology conflicts and China’s resort to “hostage diplomacy” with the arrest of two Canadians in response to the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. The next chart below suggests the plunge in Canadian views of China in the first half of 2019 left little scope for the pandemic to make things worse.

On the other side of the Atlantic, European views of China also began to slide in 2018–19.

In a key strategic outlook document released in April 2019, the European Commission designated China a "cooperation partner," an “economic competitor," and, most dramatically, a "systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance."

Souring European views of China coincided with General Secretary Xi Jinping’s second term as the Chinese Communist Party’s paramount leader, which began with a declaration of China providing “an entirely new choice” and “China solutions” to the world’s developing countries, followed by the removal of term limits for the presidency. These developments crystallized a dictatorial, ideological image of Xi at a time when Europe sought to position itself as a bastion of democracy.

China’s approval rating fell from -6 to -17 in 2019, before plunging to -30 in the pandemic year, 2020. It has hardly improved since then. 

However, the pandemic did not negatively affect China’s global image in much of the Global South. In sub-Saharan Africa, average opinions of China held strong, even after high-profile instances of discrimination and mistreatment of Africans in China in the pandemic’s early stages. In the Middle East, too, there is little sign that the pandemic damaged China’s reputation.

Illustrating the importance of distinguishing between public discourse and public opinion, surveys of the 223 million citizens of the continent’s largest power, Nigeria, showed no correlation with social media frenzies over anti-African racism incidents in Guangzhou and other Chinese cities in early 2020.

In Southeast Asia, contrary to some findings, there are signs the pandemic may have ultimately helped China’s image. Overall, 2020–21 coincided with a temporary increase in favorability, perhaps due to China’s successful control measures, mask diplomacy, and distribution of vaccines. 

A subsequent series of results, shown below, even suggests a possible improvement in China’s image in Vietnam, which received significant assistance from China in the form of vaccines. Controversial at the time in many parts of the country, the vaccine campaign may have shifted the needle by demonstrating China’s capacity to deliver aid. Of course, the results must also be interpreted cautiously in light of Vietnam’s tightening political direction under then–general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the late Nguyen Phu Trong.

The most dramatic and surprising impact of the pandemic was on China’s image in Latin America. Until 2020, China’s popularity in the region had been strong, with only sub-Saharan Africa leaning more positive. China’s overall net favorability consistently averaged around +30 before the pandemic, with citizens in Latin America more than twice as likely to hold positive views of China than negative views.

However, region-wide, negative sentiments increased by 15 points in 2020, while positive sentiments fell by 5 points. Latin America appears to have parted company with Africa in laying the blame for the pandemic firmly on China.

Some of the biggest drops were seen in the most populous South American countries. In Brazil and Argentina, net favorability plunged more than 20 points and had not recovered as of 2024. In Peru, the drop was more than 25 points, though there, by contrast, China's approval rating has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.

Correlation is not causation, so the changes in China's international image after 2020 only serve to illustrate the potential impact of the pandemic. Further analysis and triangulation with on-the-ground sources will be required to rigorously assess the impact of COVID-19. This assessment will also be important to understand the effects, and effectiveness, of China's — and other great powers' — vaccine and mask diplomacy.