Max Fisher draws up a map comparing America’s and China’s popularity abroad. The contest is most heated in Southeast Asia:
It’s easy to over-exaggerate any competition for global influence between the U.S. and China; Beijing simply doesn’t see itself as a world leader or power in the same way that Washington does. But the diplomatic chess match is more real in Southeast Asia, an increasingly important and resource-rich region that has some historical cause for skepticism of both Chinese and American meddling. If I were in charge of long-term foreign policy planning for either China or the U.S., this is the region where I’d focus the most energy, both because of its importance and because it seems so unusually uncommitted.
In diplomatic terms, China has largely failed to establish greater influence here, often over-playing its hand in a way that Southeast Asian neighbors see as bullying or threatening and a cause for greater reliance on U.S. protection. So it’s interesting to see that this is and is not reflected in the Pew data. The Philippines, a close U.S. military ally and its only former colony, appears as pro-American as ever. But not Malaysia, which, despite an ongoing territorial dispute with China, reports a sky-high 81 percent favorability rating for China.
The Dish 