China-EU_Relations_Reassessing_the_China-EU_Comprehensive_Strategic_Partnership

influence as follows: the USA, the EU, Russia and Japan. The question option“fair”
was deleted and the country-specific option“China”was added in the 2008 survey,
thus this caused a relatively substantial disturbance to the two-year comparisons. In
the 2008 survey, the Chinese common people ranked the countries in the order of
decreasing international influence as follows: the USA, the EU, China, Russia and
Japan (see Table10.4).
In response to the question“How do you evaluate the EU’s roles in the current
international economic system?”, 85.32 % of the respondents believed that the EU
was“relatively important”and“extremely important”in the international economy,
while thisfigure was 85.60 % in 2007, the two percentages being basically the
same. However, the proportion of respondents who believed that the EU was
“relatively important”fell noticeably in the period 2007–2010 (see Table10.5).
Overall, the Chinese common people made a relatively positive evaluation about
the EU’s international influence since they believed that the EU was less influential
than the USA but more influential than China, Russia and Japan. However, with
regard to the specific evaluation of its roles in the international economic system,
the proportion of the Chinese common people who believed that the EU was
“extremely important” markedly declined, while that of the Chinese common
people who believed that the EU was“relatively important”increased somewhat. It
can be predicted that with a further decrease in the EU’s international influence due
to the debt crisis and the gradual increase in China’s international influence,
international influence ranking will change. Currently, domestic survey data in the
last two years have not yet been further substantiated and such a trend has not been
explicitly revealed yet.

Table 10.4 Evaluation of the international influence of major countries and territories by as seen
by the Chinese common people in 2008 and 2010 (Unit%)

Very great Relatively

great

Fair Less

influential

No

influence

No

response

2008/2010 2008/2010 2008/2010 2008/2010 2008/2010 2008/2010

Russia 16.0/11.9 61.5/42.5 31.6 14.5/5.7 1.5/0.8 6.5/7.5

The

USA

65.5/61.9 26.6/24.9 5.7 2.5/1.5 0.8/0.5 4.6/5.5

The EU 27.0/25.6 55.6/47.9 15.2 8.5/2.8 1.4/0.6 7.5/8.0

Japan 6.3/5.5 46.2/27.5 43.4 33.5/13.8 7.1/2.7 6.9/7.2

China 27.4 51.4 – 13.2 2.4 5.6

Table 10.5 Evaluation of the EU’s roles in the international economic system as seen by the
Chinese common people in the period 2007–2010 (Unit%)

Year Extremely

important

Relatively

important

Less

important

Completely

unimportant

No

response

2007 35.10 50.50 3.50 0.8 10.00

2010 20.02 65.30 5.94 0.26 8.47

192 L. Zuokui