The United States has a planet-sized PR problem that appears not just inexplicable but completely bizarre. A shocking study from Pew Research has found that China is now viewed more positively than America in nearly 30 of the 36 countries surveyed — including longtime allies such as the United Kingdom.
Obviously, countries such as France and Canada dislike the U.S. right now because of the man currently living in the White House. But no matter what someone might think of him, President Donald Trump isn’t even in the same time zone as Xi Jinping, China’s autocratic president, on his own people. Nor was Trump responsible for a pandemic that threw the planet into two years of oppression, panic, and death.
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So what has caused citizens of many of America’s supposed friends to hold China in higher regard than the U.S. and express greater confidence in Xi than in the democratically elected president of a constitutional republic?
Simple: China has the best public relations strategy in the world.
Its strategy began decades ago, long before many readers of this piece were alive. The country made itself economically indispensable through aggressive development of its manufacturing and tech infrastructure and, more recently, through the Belt and Road Initiative and cornering the global market on rare earth metals and other critical resources. It also has a huge population whose people increasingly have money to spend.
That strategy has borne fruit: Today, everyone relies on China for something. This means that it can tell countries, NGOs, and corporations what to do. Look at how the NBA caved on freedom for Hong Kong or how Hollywood tough guy John Cena lost his spine in a groveling apology for saying Taiwan is an independent nation.
Sure, the U.S. does it, too. It uses sanctions, trade policy, military power, and access to the world’s largest economy to pursue its interests. But pushing back against our leaders is practically a cottage industry. American allies publicly criticize Washington. Politicians win votes by opposing it. Journalists investigate it, companies challenge it, and protesters denounce it.
How many governments, institutions, or top businesses confront China with the same confidence? We already know — just ask the United Nations, which criticizes the U.S. and Israel more than any other nation, and the World Health Organization, which swallowed and enforced China’s COVID-19 lies. Or just look at the 2022 Winter Olympics — held in, if you remember, Beijing, even as China was being accused of genocide against a Muslim minority.
China’s second tactic is strategic silence. Little information gets out without passing through state controls. Critical journalists are restricted, online discussion is censored, and dissenting voices are silenced before the rest of the world hears them.
Contrast that with America’s openness. We know exactly what the president is thinking because he blurts it out on Truth Social. Journalists can file FOIA requests to dig up embarrassing documents, knowing they will not be tortured in the tiger chair for challenging the government. Every mistake, scandal, argument, and institutional failure is exposed and amplified in real time. Free speech, a free press, and publicly combative elections are democratic strengths, but they can also make the country look chaotic, divided, and downright ugly.
Then there’s China’s gaslighting. Lying is wrong, but we all know people who do it. Beijing can deny, deflect, and repeat its preferred version of events without facing meaningful public contradiction at home. It does not need everyone to believe the official story; it only needs enough people to accept it — or to become uncertain about what is true.
Gaslighting is certainly common in the White House, too. The difference is that even its smallest claims are challenged by individuals and institutions across the country and worldwide. When Trump lies, we all mock him. Try that with Xi, and you won’t be laughing for long.
Thankfully, China’s PR magic is not working on everyone. Of the six countries that view the U.S. much more positively, four of them — Japan, South Korea, India, and the Philippines — sit close enough to China to know exactly what they are dealing with. Like any stakeholder close to the reality on the ground, they are not fooled.
It’s easy to say that China’s success has put America into a “crisis.” I’m no foreign affairs expert, so I’ll let those people and the historians fight it out. What I will say is that a few Truth Social posts or the right handshakes from the next president won’t solve our reputational problem. It’s time to look at crisis communications for the answer — and good crisis comms starts with focusing on core stakeholders.
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The first group is America’s 350 million citizens, many of whom travel internationally and can bring the best parts of our culture up close and personal to those who have heard of us only from afar. Second, we should make ourselves as appealing as possible to immigrants and tourists, like the millions of Europeans who came here for the World Cup and, to their own shock, found themselves raving about the USA all over social media.
That’s it. We can’t match China’s PR game until we’ve put in the same decades its leaders did. That starts by creating an army of third-party advocates, whose glowing reviews will put another billion deposits in the public opinion trust bank.
Dustin Siggins is the founder of Proven Media Solutions.
