Attitudes toward China in the U.S. are evolving. Seventy-one per cent of Americans view it unfavourably according to a January 2026 Pew Research Center survey – a significant majority, but down from a high of 83 per cent in March 2023. And the fraction who call China an “enemy” has fallen from 42 per cent in March 2024 to 28 per cent. While there is a marked partisan split, with 44 per cent of Republicans and 14 per cent of Democrats respectively assigning it that label, the shift in overall sentiment in under two years is notable.

Several factors are probably at work. The memory of COVID-19, which U.S. President Donald Trump blamed on China in his first term, is fading. Trump has focused on the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East in his second term, so Beijing is not foremost on most Americans’ minds. And while his administration has recently taken actions that have angered China – accusing it of “industrial-scale” theft of U.S. artificial intelligence technology and imposing sweeping sanctions to slow its oil and chemicals trade with Iran – the president himself regularly praises his counterpart, Xi Jinping. 

But those factors only go so far in explaining the most significant aspect of the shift in sentiment: a generational gap that transcends ideological divides. Just 32 per cent of Republicans ages 18-49 call China an enemy (55 per cent ages 50 and older do). The corresponding figure for young Democrats is 10 per cent. Pew’s findings align with those of a November 2025 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace survey: just 27 per cent ages 18-29 think that their lives would become “worse” were China’s power to overtake the U.S.’s (52 per cent ages 65 and older do).

Why the generational divide? China’s rising stature is doubtless jarring for those who came of age when it was still impoverished and (seemingly) incapable of world-leading innovation. Young people, however, are more accustomed to China’s growing power. China became the second-largest defence spender in 2008 and has had the second-largest economy since 2010. The young are also more pessimistic about their economic prospects and likelier, therefore, to prioritise cost-of-living issues at home above great-power competition abroad – and to idealise aspects of life in China (witness the “Chinamaxxing” phenomenon online).

Many developments could change these sentiments, including a shift in political rhetoric from Trump or his successor, a new pandemic, or (in the worst case) an outbreak of armed conflict. For now, though, a disconnect exists between the way in which many policymakers frame bilateral relations – evoking a Cold War-style twilight struggle that Washington must “win” – and the public’s assessment. According to a July 2025 Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, 53 per cent of Americans want the U.S. to pursue “friendly cooperation and engagement with China”, the first time since 2019 that a majority has expressed that view. Members of Congress who wish to advance a more nuanced conversation on China policy should take heart that the public seems increasingly receptive to one.