Most Chinese Americans hold an unfavorable view of their ancestral homeland, according to a new study, making them the Asian immigrant group most negative about their country of origin.
The Pew Research Center reported Wednesday that most immigrants and descendants from the Communist nation viewed other Asian countries, including even breakaway Taiwan, more positively than China.
Among Chinese Americans, just 41% had a favorable view of mainland China, including 45% of immigrant adults and 25% of those born in the U.S.
By comparison, 62% of Chinese Americans expressed a favorable view of Taiwan, a key Chinese rival.
Overall, just 20% of all Asians surveyed expressed a positive view of China. The survey included Americans of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Vietnamese descent and the findings showed no significant difference between self-identified Democrats and Republicans.
The findings come amid “the American public’s increasingly negative views of China and rising concern over tensions between mainland China and Taiwan,” Pew researchers Neil G. Ruiz, Carolyn Im, Christine Huang and Laura Silver said in a summary of the findings.
“Asian Americans with lower levels of education tend to feel more positively about China than those with more education,” they wrote, noting that the study found the opposite regarding other Asian nations.
Most Chinese Americans surveyed reported favorable views of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. That made them the only Asian group that felt more favorably about other Asian nations than their mother country.
Overall, most Asians surveyed said they had no desire to return to their ancestral countries and 53% said the U.S. will be the dominant world power over the next 10 years. However, immigrants were more likely than native-born American Asians to have positive feelings about the old country.
About nine in 10 Taiwanese and Japanese Americans expressed a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of their ancestral homelands, as did large majorities of Korean, Indian and Filipino adults. A slimmer majority of Vietnamese Americans (59%) expressed a favorable view of Communist Vietnam.
After China, India received the lowest favorability rating. While 76% of Indian Americans expressed a favorable view of the country, only 23% of all Asians surveyed shared their opinion. Vietnam and the Philippines also received more mixed reviews than Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the most-liked countries of the seven.
Pew administered the multi-lingual survey online and by mail to 7,006 Asian adults living in the U.S. from July 5, 2022, to Jan. 27 this year. The margin of error for all respondents was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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