obviously had relatively positive views; conclusions about Northern European
countries cannot be drawn due to lack of data.
Fifth, public opinion in some European countries was contrary to the actual
situation; for example, China and Germany reached the friendliest level in
China-EU political and strategic relations, but the degree of favorability from
common German people towards China was very low in most cases. Recently, the
UK and China have not been on good terms, but the degree of favorability
expressed by common British people towards China was generally higher than that
in other large European countries.
Sixth, compared to international regions, Europe was the most“pessimistic
about”China. Among the whole regions of Asia, Europe, Africa, South America,
North America and Oceania, Europe generally had a less positive evaluation of
China than other regions had. Asian countries showed polarization since countries
like Japan and India had a negative evaluation of China while such countries as
Pakistan had a relatively positive evaluation of China.
11.3 Analysis of the Background or Factors
that Influenced the Formation of European
Conceptions of ChinaThere are objective and subjective causes for the formation of European concep-
tions of China. Objective causes are summarized below.
First, globalization is undoubtedly the main cause. As an emerging country,
China has rapidly advanced in capital accumulation and trade development. Some
countries benefited from China’s development and prosperity, while some other
countries failed to adapt to the rise of emerging economies in the process of
globalization due to the industrial structure, etc., resulting in changes in the pattern
of interests. For example, enterprises in some developed countries constantly suf-
fered setbacks during competition with their Chinese counterparts; as a result,
common people in Western countries were discontented with China, which was
relatively obvious in France and Italy. Some Western countries believed that they
did not obtain the interests they had imagined from China’s development and thus
were dissatisfied with China, which was relatively evident in Germany. The UK
benefited from its cooperation with China and China’s economic development, thus
there were few factors resulting in negative views of China.
Second, thefinancial crisis engulfed the world in 2008–2009, and the European
sovereign debt crisis made the economy of European countries worse, thus the
common people felt anxious and were at a loss about the future, and so they had
increasingly anti-globalization sentiments. Meanwhile, as rapidly developing
emerging economies exerted competitive pressure on Europe, the common people
in some European countries suffered a psychological gap and became resentful of
emerging countries, including China. As shown by the results of surveys conducted
224 L. Zuokui