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Poll shows US youth favor China engagement, reject restrictive policies; Washington’s China containment narratives lose traction: expert_我的网站

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    Students from Lincoln High School and Steilacoom High School in the United States wait on Saturday at San Francisco International Airport in California for their flight to take them on a cultural-exchange journey to China. Photo: China News Service
A US public opinion survey indicated that most younger Americans don't see China as a critical threat to the US and favor a policy of friendly cooperation and engagement. A Chinese expert said that public sentiment demonstrates that narratives long constructed by certain US politicians to contain China's development have lost traction among young Americans, adding that, aided by social media, they are better able to form independent judgments about the reality of China's development.
Reflecting these generational shifts, data from a joint Chicago Council-NPR-Ipsos survey, conducted in the US from March 13 to 15, 2026, and the 2025 Chicago Council Survey showed that attitudes toward China are becoming increasingly differentiated across age groups, according to a report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on Wednesday. 
This research covers four generational cohorts following standard cohort definitions. These include Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964, Gen X born between 1965 and 1980, Millennials born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z born between 1997 and 2013.
The report said younger generations consistently expressed less antagonistic and more flexible views on China's role in the world, as well as greater skepticism toward restrictive economic and social policies.
The survey showed that over the past two decades, younger Americans have consistently expressed "less concern about China's rise than older generations." Minorities of Millennials, at 43 percent, and Generation Zers, at 34 percent, view the development of China as a world power as a critical threat to the US, compared with majorities of Baby Boomers, at 62 percent, and Generation Xers at 56 percent.
China's sustained growth has injected positive impetus into global development, enabling the international community to more clearly recognize China's role as a contributor, Shen Yi, director of the International Research Institute of Global Cyberspace Governance at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Regarding views on China's global ambitions, the report said younger cohorts are "more open to the possibility that China's desired global role might be more collaborative."
Young Americans' attitudes toward China also signal that the full set of narratives long crafted by certain US politicians to contain China's development has lost traction among younger generations in the US, Shen said.
The report also noted that support for a US policy of cooperation and engagement with China has rebounded sharply from the lows of 2024.
Majorities of Generation Z, at 59 percent, and Millennials at 58 percent favor a policy of friendly cooperation and engagement with China, nearly 10 percentage points above the shares of Baby Boomers and Generation X who hold the same view.
"Younger Americans have come of age in a more interconnected world shaped by digital exchange and cross-border education, where social media trends have made engagement with Chinese culture increasingly ordinary," reads the report.
In January this year, creator @sherryxiiruii listed a series of distinct Chinese lifestyle habits in a viral TikTok video, and the playful "prophecy" sparked a global craze, gaining nearly 750,000 likes and sparked a top-trending hashtag #BecomingChinese, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Shen said that by bypassing screening and filtering by traditional US media, social media platforms provide ordinary Americans, particularly young people, direct access to the everyday lives of Chinese citizens and the realities of Chinese society, adding that this empowers them to "break free from an information landscape dominated by one-sided, skewed messaging."
Additionally, the report said Millennials and Gen Zers show strong opposition to restrictive policies targeting Chinese students, higher tariffs, and reduced trade overall. For example, 65 percent of Millennials and 64 percent of Gen Zers oppose limiting the number of Chinese students studying in the US.
Yet the policy direction of the US administration stands in stark contrast to the prevailing views. For example, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in July announced its forthcoming policy prohibiting NSF funds from being spent on collaboration with entities on US restricted parties lists, which could effectively bar collaborations between NSF-funded US scientists and nearly all Chinese research institutions and their employees, US media reported.
Such a contrast also lays bare a notable disconnect between US policymaking and the genuine sentiments of ordinary Americans, as authorities seldom take public aspirations into account when rolling out relevant initiatives, Shen said.
In the short term, perceptions among younger generations cannot reverse Washington's existing restrictive policies toward China. From a long-term perspective, however, the more objective and amicable views of China held by today's youth carry irreplaceable positive value, the expert said.
。         Conceptual diagram of AI Photo: VCG
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) technology companies are gaining a growing foothold among international users, with their models topping rankings on some leading industry platforms, ahead of their US counterparts.
Chinese AI companies, with their open-source strategies and cost effectiveness, are gaining growing adoption among overseas developers despite the continued US restrictions on China's access to advanced chips and AI technologies, a Chinese veteran industry analyst said, noting that global AI competition should be about innovation capabilities and the ability to build attractive ecosystems, rather than about who can erect higher technological barriers.
The latest weekly large-language model (LLM) rankings from AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter showed that models developed by Chinese companies swept the top four spots and took six of the top 10, the Global Times noted on the platform on Tuesday. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 topped the ranking with 9.39 trillion tokens in usage, followed closely by Tencent's Hy3 with 8.94 trillion.
From August 3 to Sunday, Chinese AI models recorded 34.25 trillion tokens in usage, up 21.76 percent from the previous week, while US AI models, although up 109.36 percent, only recorded 9.17 trillion tokens, about three times less than that of Chinese models.
Another DeepSeek model, V4 Flash 0423, came in third, followed by Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.5 in fourth place. Zhipu AI's GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4 Pro also made the top 10.
Notably, usage of the top-ranked DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 surged 302 percent over the week. The rankings are based on actual model usage on OpenRouter, highlighting the growing adoption of Chinese AI models among global developers and their strong presence on the platform, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the latest trending rankings on Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source AI community, also highlighted the growing influence of Chinese AI models among global developers. As of Tuesday, four of the top five models on the platform's Trending Models list were linked to Chinese AI companies, with MiniMax's newly released full modality model MiniMax H3 topping the ranking.
One key reason Chinese AI models are gaining popularity is their combination of strong performance, lower costs and greater openness, Chinese experts said.
"Companies such as DeepSeek, MiniMax and Zhipu AI have released open-weight models that developers can download, customize and use to build their own applications. Many Chinese models also come with relatively low API and inference costs, making them more affordable for start-ups and smaller businesses," Xiang said.
According to UBS estimates cited by media reports, leading Chinese AI models cost about one-tenth as much to train as comparable overseas models, while their API prices are typically only 10 percent to 20 percent of those of foreign alternatives.
"China's strong industrial foundation in power supply, computing infrastructure and data center development also provides solid support for the large-scale deployment of AI," said Xiang.
In contrast to many large US AI companies that primarily offer their flagship models through closed platforms and application programming interfaces, China's are gaining traction among global developers with its open model approach, Ma Jihua, a veteran industry analyst, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The open model approach allows a much broader range of developers, including smaller players, to participate in AI development rather than leaving advanced AI capabilities concentrated in the hands of a few large companies, said Ma. As more developers build on these models, they can create new tools and applications, further expanding the ecosystem around Chinese AI models, Ma added.
China's recently released Action Plan for Global AI Governance explicitly encourages the joint development of international open-source AI communities, greater international exchanges and cooperation among open-source communities, and the sharing of general purpose large models, foundational algorithms and software tools.
Recently, the US government has ramped up its unilateral moves targeting China's AI-related sector, including a plan to ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models, US media outlets have reported.
The growing influence of Chinese AI models shows that technological blockades cannot hold back innovation and industrial development, Ma said, noting that such restrictions could instead backfire by raising costs for US companies and limiting their access to competitive technologies and global AI cooperation.
Chinese AI models are already seeing growing adoption among US businesses. Chinese AI models now consistently account for more than 30 percent of weekly token usage by US companies, with the share peaking at 46 percent, the People's Daily reported, citing data from a third party industry platform.
The US should view the development of China's AI industry objectively, and avoid politicizing or overstretching the concept of national security in normal technological and industrial competition, Ma said. 
"After all, global AI competition should ultimately be about innovation and the ability to build attractive ecosystems, rather than about who can erect higher technological barriers," Ma noted.
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