The recent survey published on Monday, March 27, 2023, China’s government has the highest approval rate in the world. Eighty-nine percent of citizens said they trust their government, by far the highest percentage of all the countries surveyed in the latest study by a leading global public relations company, ‘Edelman‘.
A Hong Kong-based Journalist and Author, Nury Vittachi, shared an update on his social media on Friday, March 31, 2023, informing about China’s highest approval rate.
An American business executive, ‘Apple Inc boss Tim Cook’; is currently visiting China; he said the country had done an excellent job by lifting all society, and it hasn’t resulted in some of the vast gaps that exist elsewhere in the world where others are being left behind”.
A long-running annual survey called Edelman Trust Barometer, published on Wednesday interviewed about 32,000 respondents from 28 countries. The Chinese angle has yet to be covered by International media.
The same survey has shown that only 42 percent of US citizens trusted their nation’s government. Edelman said the low score was due to a struggling economy, a gap between haves and have-nots, and the polarization of society.
The Chinese citizens’ support for their government has remained high for many years – even in the face of increasing freedom to criticize officials on social issues, such as the lack of union protection for workers in the courier sector, a significant area of public complaint over the past year.
Ironically, analysts think the international media’s portrayal of China as a dystopian gulag where no one can speak has united citizens and civil servants in a desire to tell a more accurate story. China has a long way to go but is making substantial progress toward becoming a well-managed and relatively healthy community which frequently discusses hot-button issues.
The President of Edelman Global and Chief Operating Officer, Matthew Harrington, said that the Chinese population appreciated society’s continued growth and prosperity. Also, he added that the country’s relative success in dealing with significant health issues in recent years was also a factor. Like all countries, the Chinese government has social issues, but people can see that efforts are being made to deal with them, Fan Hong, a researcher at Tsinghua University, told China Daily.
Matthew Harrington added, “the government’s strong commitment to climate change issues was also considered a plus factor in the public’s view. While unable to immediately halt the coal industry, China has invested more in the transition to clean energy than almost all other countries put together”.
The Edelman report indicated tremendous global pessimism, with 24 of 28 countries seeing all-time lows in the number of people who think their families will be better off in five years. Chinese respondents were a notable exception, with a general belief that the country was heading in a positive direction.
Matthew Harrington also added that China remains a vital economic force in the world economy, echoing the view of the International Monetary Fund; she also expressed earlier that China would provide one-third of global economic growth for 2023.
