Pew finds improved global view of China as Donald Trump hurts perceptions of US
Pew's latest survey of 24 countries found that opinion towards the US and its president, Donald Trump, had deteriorated, while views of China and its president, Xi Jinping, had improved in many countries worldwide.
More than half — 53 per cent — of Australians surveyed said they favoured placing more importance on economic ties with China, a large increase from 39 per cent in 2021.
Only 42 per cent of Australians said it was more important to prioritise economic ties with the US — a drop from 52 per cent who said the same thing in 2021.
Pew found the US was viewed more favourably than China in eight countries, China was viewed more favourably in seven, and the two were viewed about equally in the remainder.
Pew did not provide definitive explanations for the shifts, but Laura Silver, associate director of research, said it is possible that views of a country may change when those of another superpower shift.
"As the US potentially looks like a less reliable partner and people have limited confidence, for example, in Trump to lead the global economy, China may look different in some people's eyes," Dr Silver said.
Also, China's human rights policies and its handling of the pandemic — which were related to negative views of the country in the past — may not weigh as much this time, she said.
A group of Democratic senators this week accused the Trump administration of ceding global influence to China by shuttering foreign aid programs, imposing tariffs on allies, cracking down on elite universities, and restricting visas for international students.
In the Pew findings, 35 per cent of those in 10 high-income countries surveyed consistently — including Canada, France, Germany and Italy — have favourable opinions of the US, down from 51 per cent from last year.
By comparison, 32 per cent of them have positive views of China, up from last year's 23 per cent.
And 24 per cent of them say they have confidence in Mr Trump, compared with 53 per cent last year for then-US president Joe Biden.
Mr Xi scored a slight improvement: 22 per cent of those in these rich countries say they have confidence in the Chinese president, up from last year's 17 per cent.
However, people in Israel have far more favourable views of the US than of China: 83 per cent of Israelis like the US, compared with 33 per cent who say they have positive views of China.
Some 69 per cent of Israelis said they have confidence in Mr Trump, while only 9 per cent expressed confidence in Mr Xi.
Pew surveyed more than 30,000 people across 25 countries — including the US, which was excluded from the comparison — from January 8 to April 26, 2025.
The margins of error for each country ranged from plus or minus 2.5 to plus or minus 4.7.
China's economy slowed slightly in the last quarter as Mr Trump's trade war escalated, but it still expanded at a robust 5.2 per cent pace, the Chinese government said on Tuesday, local time.
That compares with 5.4 per cent annual growth in January-March.
Chinese authorities said that in quarterly terms, the world's second-largest economy expanded by 1.1 per cent.
In the first half of the year, the Chinese economy grew at a 5.3 per cent annual pace, the official data show.
However, some analysts said actual growth may have been significantly slower.
Zichun Huang of Capital Economics noted that investments in fixed assets such as factory equipment rose only 2.8 per cent in the first half of the year, implying 2.9 per cent annual growth in May and a mere 0.5 per cent increase in June.
The 5.2 per cent growth rate overstates the pace of expansion by about 1.5 percentage points, she said.
Capital Economics' activity proxy shows growth in China's gross domestic product, or GDP, at less than 4 per cent year-on-year in April and May, Dr Huang said, forecasting annual growth of 3.5 per cent for full-year 2025.
"The economic outlook for the rest of the year remains challenging," she wrote in a report.
Dr Huang added, though, that "political pressure to meet annual growth targets, even if only on paper, means that published GDP growth will be much higher".
A key factor behind the latest upbeat data was strong exports.
On Monday, China reported that its exports accelerated in June, rising 5.8 per cent from a year earlier, up from a 4.8 per cent increase in May.
Production of high-tech products, vehicles and electrical machinery and equipment rose by about 10 per cent or more from a year earlier.
A reprieve on painfully high tariffs on Chinese exports to the US prompted a rush of orders by companies and consumers as the two sides resumed trade talks.
Chinese companies also have expanded exports to and offshore manufacturing in other countries such as Vietnam, helping to offset the impact of higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
But a 0.1 per cent decline in consumer prices in the first half of 2025 showed continuing weakness in domestic demand, a long-term challenge for the ruling communist party as the Chinese population declines and ages.
Those troubles deepened during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Falling property prices and slowing retail sales were also of concern, said Lynne Song of ING Economics.
Price cutting by Chinese manufacturers to help compete in overseas markets is adding to deflationary pressures that ultimately erode their competitiveness, Louise Loo of Oxford Economics said in a report.
Chinese leaders have set a growth target of 5 per cent for this year, in line with last year's growth.
A resumption of US tariffs of up to 245 per cent if Washington and Beijing fail to meet an August 12 deadline for a new trade deal could derail the recovery in exports, a major driver of growth and employment.
ABC/AP
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Humanoid robots embodiment of China's AI ambitions
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
How easy is it to trick the Australian Taxation Office?
Sam Hawley: How easy is it to trick the Australian Tax Office? Well, for fraudsters it's not hard at all and plenty have done it costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have never been recovered. Today, Angus Grigg on his Four Corners investigation into the biggest GST scam in history and how the ATO dropped the ball. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam Hawley: Angus, you've been hard at work looking into what's going on at the Australian Tax Office. And you've really been having a deep look into this huge GST scam. Now, this unfolded in no other than Mildura in north-west Victoria. So, take me there and tell me about local resident Sarah. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Mildura is a really beautiful town, an irrigation town on the Murray in North West Victoria. And this GST scam really took off in Mildura. And it really was circulating within a sort of population that you might say is low socioeconomic groups, people on welfare, people with addiction issues. And we went to interview one person called Sarah. She was going through quite a bit of financial hardship at the time. I think she'd separated from her partner who was facing pretty serious charges at the time as well. And she was short of money because she needed to have some dental work done. So one of her friends showed her how to use a business that had been registered and an ABN linked to GST to claim GST refunds fraudulently. 'Sarah': The people that I was associating with at that time, they had done it and told me how easy it was to get a large amount of money quickly. And I just thought at the time it was a good idea because I was in a bit of financial trouble. Angus Grigg: She pretended, if you like, to be a hairdresser, despite the fact that she had no hairdressing qualifications. She'd never worked in a hairdresser, hadn't hired premises, had no equipment. And so she logged into her myGov account and first of all, claimed $15,000 and then did it a second time and got another $15,000. 'Sarah': I don't even really still understand how it went through. I was a single parent and then all of a sudden I'm a hairdresser that's getting this return put into my account with no other payments from clients or anything like that to balance it was needed. Like no proof. Angus Grigg: Now, bear in mind, the money went into the same account as her welfare payments and the money went within about 10 days without any verification, without any checks, without anyone from the tax office ringing and saying, what did you spend this money on? Do you have hairdressing qualifications? Have you hired premises? You know, she just absolutely couldn't believe how easy it was. 'Sarah': Yeah, I just couldn't believe it that it was just sitting there on my everyday access debit bank card. Angus Grigg: Now, the other thing to bear in mind, to receive a GST refund of $30,000, she would have needed to have capital expenditure or bought stock and other items for her hairdressing business of about $300,000. Now, surely a single mother living on welfare, getting family tax benefits, that should have been a red flag for the tax office. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. So Sarah, which is not her real name, just by the way, you've changed that for this story to keep her anonymous. She just tells the ATO she's a hairdresser and then the tax office falls for it. That's extraordinary. Angus Grigg: It is. And the fact that you don't need a receipt, you don't need any proof of the line of work you're in is extraordinary. And that's because the tax office basically fired most of the humans in the loop and started relying on algorithms or computers, if you like, to make these payments. They wanted to ensure the timely payment of GST refunds to businesses. But in doing that, they really opened the door up to fraud. Sam Hawley: Right. Sure. So the tax office wants to streamline things. But in the meantime, people like Sarah are all of a sudden dabbling in fraud. And as we've mentioned, she's not the only one. There's a lot of other people doing a very similar thing. Tell me about Linden Phillips. What was he up to? Angus Grigg: Linden Phillips, once again from Mildura, for us, he was like patient zero. It looks like he was the really one of the very, very early people in this scam. So what happens is that Linden Phillips gets out of jail in August 2021. And he already has a company registered. And so he reactivates his GST registration through his ABN and his MyGov account. And then within a couple of weeks of getting out of jail, he does what I'd sort of call a test run. And he claims $13,000 in GST refunds from the tax office. Once again, no documents, no receipts, no verification required. He gets that money within a couple of weeks and clearly then thinks, OK, I'm going to go for the big one. And so what he does is he lodges 46 backdated GST claims for an amount of $821,000 in GST. And the real kicker here is that for most of the period those GST claims are lodged, he's actually in jail. Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh. Angus Grigg: I know. He just couldn't make it up. Sam Hawley: What does he do with all that money? Angus Grigg: Well, of course, he spends it, right? Within a couple of weeks, the money's completely gone. He buys himself a second-hand Porsche. Somewhat endearingly, he buys his mother a house. But the really damning thing here is that the tax office notice it. Finally, someone, there's a human in the loop and they pick up the fact that, hey, maybe something's a bit wrong here. And so they ring him up and he says, oh yeah, no, it's all legitimate. I'll get my accountant to call you. The accountant never calls. They send him some emails. They write him some letters. He ignores them all. And the really damning thing here is the tax office does nothing for four months. And in that four month period, this scam absolutely explodes. So what we did is we went back and we deconstructed, if you like, the tax office's narrative. And the narrative was that this fraud took off on social media. The tax office noticed it. They cracked down really hard, really quickly, and they brought it under control. Now we sort about testing that idea. Sam Hawley: So the ATO says it did this great job. It cracked down on this fraud. But what actually happened? Because you actually had a look at that and discovered, in fact, the ATO didn't do much at all. Angus Grigg: No, exactly. So Linden Phillips does finally get caught, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the ATO. It all comes down to the smarts of a local detective in Mildura named Vanessa Power. Now, she is attending Phillips's house on a drugs and gun charge, and she searches his premises, his house, and she confiscates a phone. And using the sort of smarts that the ATO should be employing, she sees that on his phone there appears to be a pretty elaborate GST scam. And in fact, it looks as though that Linden Phillips had helped 60 other people perpetrate this scam. Linden Phillips is arrested. And then a few weeks later, the ATO finally launch what they call Operation Protego, which is to crack down on this GST scam. Sam Hawley: Wow. Okay. And at that point, of course, Sarah, who we spoke about earlier, she was also arrested back in December 2022. But the thing is, the money, it's sort of gone, right? 'Sarah': I can't pay it back. It's not even an option at the moment. Or it probably never will be. Sam Hawley: Is there any way the tax office can actually get these funds back? Angus Grigg: Well, this is the point, right? In the end, $2 billion was stolen from the tax system by 56,000 people. Now, the ATO tell us that of those 56,000 people who perpetrated this scam, just 120, I think it might be 122 now, have been convicted. Secondly, of the $2 billion stolen, the ATO tells us that only 160 million, or around 8% of that, has been recovered. Sam Hawley: And, Angus, that money, it really is just a drop in the ocean, right? Because you've also looked at all the other funds that the ATO hasn't managed to collect, and you've spoken to Karen Payne. Now, she's a former Inspector General of Taxation. She basically says if the ATO had collected what it was owed, then we would all be paying less tax. Angus Grigg: Yeah. Karen Payne, she really focused on what's called collectible debt. And that is this sort of giant number that the ATO doesn't like to talk about. And when she started looking at it, it was about $30 billion. Then it rose to about $50 billion. The figure is now $53 billion. And that is the amount of money or taxes that the ATO has levied, if you like, but not collected. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The large percentage of the debts that were due were in fact owned by a very small number of taxpayers or they're related to a small number of taxpayer accounts. So you'd kind of think it's a small number of people you need to be chasing. Angus Grigg: And the point that Karen Payne was making is that if we collected all that tax, perhaps we would not have to pay as much tax, all of us, but also we'd have more money to spend on really basic things like schools, roads and hospitals. Karen Payne, Inspector General of Taxation, 2019-24: The fact that it keeps rising is troubling. So it's fundamental, I think, that we've got good administration of the tax system because the integrity of the tax system is fundamentally important to all of us. It pays for all of the services that we benefit from. Sam Hawley: Angus, despite everything that you have said, which is frankly really concerning, the ATO itself thinks it's doing a pretty good job, right? Because Chris Jordan, who was the tax commissioner up until 2024, he's been putting a rather positive spin on the ATO's work. Angus Grigg: Yeah. This is the really extraordinary thing. Despite all these scandals, the ATO tells us they are doing a great job. Just before Chris Jordan stepped down as tax commissioner, he did a victory lap, if you like, at the National Press Club, and he pointed out all the great, terrific things that the ATO has done. Chris Jordan, Tax Commissioner, 2013-24: We've successfully charted a massive program of transformation. We've cut red tape and we've modernised our administration of the tax system as part of the digital revolution to make tax just happen.


Perth Now
3 hours ago
- Perth Now
Trump, EU's von der Leyen to meet to clinch trade deal
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