China's poor attitude towards human rights results in decline in popularity in developed countries: Study

A new study has revealed that China’s popularity in developed countries has seen a major fall due to the way the country has been treating minority groups and the excessive restrictions on freedom and human rights.

The research was conducted by Pew Research Center where experts gathered opinions of 18,850 people from Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

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Experts observed that the unfavourable views towards China are at a record-high in Sweden, Australia, South Korea and the US. Additionally, the negative attitude towards the Asian countries is constantly increasing in Australia, Canada and the UK due to bilateral tensions in 2020 under the Xi Jinping government.

Except for Singapore and Greece, where 64 per cent and 52 per cent of people hold favourable views about China respectively, no other participant country has crossed the threshold of 40 per cent in terms of holding favourable views about China.

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The reason behind this wave of negative outlook towards China is Xi Jinping's government’s attitude towards the freedom of its citizens and human rights. A large number of people believe China fails to provide and respect the freedom to its own people. With an exception of Singapore (where only 60 per cent population feels this way), in all other countries at least 80 per cent of people believe China practises poor freedom and rights.

In addition to this, the majority of the participants have no confidence in the Chinese President Xi Jinping with regards to doing the right thing in world affairs. China’s popularity has suffered majorly due to the coronavirus pandemic that allegedly originated from a lab in Wuhan.