Pew poll: US power threatens

In a surprising shift, an increasing number of people in Japan and South Korea are seeing the United States as a "major threat", a new poll found.

The findings, released on Sunday as part of the Washington-based Pew Research Center's Spring 2018 Global Attitudes Survey, showed that 66 percent of survey respondents in Japan listed US power and influence as a "major threat". The number was even higher in South Korea, at 67 percent.

Covering about 27,612 respondents in 26 countries from May to August in 2018, the survey also found that a median of 45 percent of respondents view US power and influence as a threat, compared to 37 percent for Russia.

There was "a strong connection between seeing America as a threat and lack of confidence in US President Donald Trump", the poll said.

"In 2013, only a quarter across 22 nations saw American power as a major threat to their country, but that jumped substantially to 38 percent in 2017, the year after Trump was elected president, and to 45 percent in 2018," the report said, adding that it was "the largest change in sentiment among the global threats tracked".

On the country level, people who see the US as a major threat included an increase of 17 percentage points in Japan, around 30 points in France and Germany, and 26 points in Brazil and Mexico.

Masanari Koike, a former member of Japan's House of Representatives, said that the changing sentiments of Japanese toward the US reflected their dissatisfaction of "America First" policy and concerns about the instability Washington had brought to the region.

Zhou Weisheng, a professor of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, also said Washington's pursuit of "America First" and slapping tariffs on whoever it thinks caused the trade deficit resulted in an increasing distrust against the country among Japanese.

"It reminds Japan of being unfairly treated by the US in the 1980s when Washington used every means, including fabricating evidence against Japanese automakers to promote 'made in America'," Zhou said. "It makes people doubt how the US wields its power, whether rightly or wrongly."

wangxu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/14/2019 page11)