China Increasingly Seen as World’s Leading Economic Power

In surveys carried out by Pew Research and published in this year’s Munich Security Conference report, citizen from more countries have been choosing China when asked the name the world’s leading economic power.

Citizens of Germany and also Russia were most likely to name China over the U.S., but citizens of France and Canada also were leaning towards naming China as the world’s top 1 economy to an increasing extent. In the UK and Mexico, about an equal number of respondents named the two countries, but the U.S. has lost support there. In 2009, when the survey was also carried out, 46 percent of Brits and 55 percent of Mexicans still thought the U.S. was number one.

Another place where U.S. prestige has suffered is Kenya, where China has been investing heavily in infrastructure projects. 39 percent of citizens said that they regarded the U.S. as the world’s most prominent economic power in 2019, down from 66 percent in 2009. In the same time frame, the number of respondents naming China rose from 13 percent to 32 percent.