STOP BEING MEAN TO THE CHINESE! Young Americans oppose a new cold war with China, says a report published yesterday. There’s a huge gulf between the mega-hostile attitudes of Washington’s old men, and the open-mindedness of the new generation in the country, said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for US-China relations at the International Crisis Group, in an essay for the Financial Times, published yesterday. “Though many China experts in Washington think Beijing’s mounting power and widespread congressional anxiety will eventually compel the US to resume a more confrontational posture, for now the public does not seem inclined to support a ‘new cold war’,” he wrote. . POISONING MINDS This is interesting. As well pushing the “China threat” theme in media across the country, Washington funds or co-funds multiple organizations around the world to poison minds against the Asian country, including the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Radio Free Asia, and literally scores of media outlets, including many in Asian countries and in Europe, we note. But despite the billion-dollar budget to demonize China, the process is failing around the world, including with young adults and youth in the U.S., multiple surveys show. . 'CHINA THREAT' NARRATIVE FAILING The standard “China threat” fearmongering technique favored by Joe Biden and others may never come back, Wyne said. After the Trump presidency ends, US policymakers “should not assume that the country’s allies will support a renewed effort to counterbalance China nor expect that invoking the ‘China threat’ will imbue younger Americans with a nationalist sense of shared purpose,” he wrote. . HOSTILITY EFFORTS FAILING A host of surveys show the failure of efforts to create hostility. The new generation in the U.S., in particular, show a positive attitude to China, Wyne said. - The number of people in the U.S. who call China an “enemy” fell from 42% in March 2024 to just 28% in a January 2026 Pew Research survey. - Only 27% of 18- to 29-year-olds think that their lives would become “worse” were China’s power to overtake America’s, according to a Carnegie Endowment survey in November 2025. - A solid 62% of those aged 18-34 want the U.S. to “co-operate with China and improve U.S.-China relations”, while just 29 per cent want it to “stand up to China”. - 82% of Gen Z respondents say that the bilateral economic relationship has been good for the U.S. over the past quarter-century, and 68% want to encourage Chinese investment, said a May 2026 American Compass survey. . BUT WAR DANGER REMAINS But there’s one angle to Wyne’s report in the Financial Times that many people may disagree with. He quotes positive things that Donald Trump has said about Chinese leader Xi Jinping, indicating that the US President and the new generation in the US think alike. Two caveats should be highlighted here. First, taken as a whole, Trump’s statements about Xi and China are so plentiful and self-contradictory that one can cherry-pick them to make a positive or negative impression. . SERIOUSLY BAD IDEAS Second, the US military media industrial complex is clearly pressing ahead with plans for a war on China – the recent RIMPAC exercise, involving some 30 nations, barely bothered to hide this. As part of this plan, we see the continuing recycling of the "China is just about to invade Taiwan" narrative, which has been wrong annually for at least forty years. A US war on China would be a terribly bad idea. But that’s the problem. As we can all see with Iran, the system shows that extremely bad ideas end up on desks in Washington DC, where, scarily often, they get an instant green light. . .

BREAKING: China’s hot: the US is not. Out of 36 countries surveyed, 25 now have a more favorable view of China than the US, a new Pew study showed yesterday. A thumbs-up for China is very visible in data from across Asia, Europe, Africa, and elsewhere—and even from Trump loyalist countries such as Argentina. “Americans’ nearest neighbors – Canadians and Mexicans – also view China more positively than the U.S.,” said Pew Research, a US survey firm. . BUYING LOYALTY The study of three dozen countries showed that the US was viewed more positively than China in only six countries in the study, including three in which Washington has purchased loyalty, largely by fearmongering-based militarization: Japan, the Philippines and South Korea. The study also showed that many people across the planet have more confidence in Chinese leader Xi Jinping to make positive decisions for the world than US President Donald Trump. The study said more people believed the US had more “freedom”, but without defining the term. . FAILURE OF DEMONIZATION OPS The results show a catastrophic failure of the billion-dollar-a-year effort to demonize China, which includes hundreds of operations – including those run by National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA-spin off that has financed thousands of groups, including the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. The US this year admitted that the NED was a political interference group which "destabilizes sovereign governments". The continuing loss of trust in the international mainstream media (which is the western mainstream media) will also have played a part. The change of views has also come about because the huge rise in new voices, with independent media groups and citizen journalists using social media to debunk false US narratives on Greater China, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong. . PEW ALSO GUILTY Pew itself will have played a role. In the past, it used to be notorious for producing surveys which apparently showed China in a bad light. The studies, presented in the media as global, were actually focused almost entirely on results from US and US-allied countries, conditioned by the media to be harshly negative on the Chinese. In contrast, this week’s new Pew survey has a much wider frame of reference, highlighting views of three dozen countries around the world, not just US allies. So even though it is just 36 countries, it is a far more valid than Pew’s own previous studies of the same question. But this could all change, with anti-China propaganda groups still being cashed-up. The NED is still active, and the notorious Radio Free Asia is being relaunched in Washington DC. .