Why the Chinese Like Their Government Far More Than the Americans Like Their Government

9 April 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Here are some of the studies that have been done of how much the people in various countries like their Government and like their head-of-state:

On 19 March 2023 I headlined “How Nations’ Citizens Rate Their Own Government” and reported that based on “the international 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which scientifically sampled 36,000+ people in 27 countries, and 1,150+ people in each,” 39% of Americans trusted their Government and 91 % of Chinese trusted their Government. Furthermore, in the U.S. 39% trusted their media, and in China 80% trusted their media. In the U.S., 49% trusted their businesses, and in China 84% trusted their businesses. In the U.S., 60% trusted their national health authorities, and in China 93% trusted their national health authorities. China ranked #1 on each one of those measures. I closed by saying:

Furthermore, the Edelman polls aren’t the only ones which show that China’s Government is extraordinarily good. On 22 August 2022, I headlined “NATO-Affiliated Poll in 53 Countries Finds Chinese the Most Think Their Country Is a Democracy” and reported that, “A poll in 53 countries by the NATO-affiliated “Alliance of Democracies” found that 83% of Chinese think that China is a democracy. That’s the highest percentage amongst all of the 53 countries surveyed.” And, the “U.S. was worse than average, and was tied at #s 40&41, out of the 53 nations, with Colombia, at 49%” — barely less than half of Americans think they live in a democracy.

On 26 January 2025, Germany’s Der Spiegel headlined “China’s Regime Stands Rock Solid: A Beijing Correspondent’s Farewell Conclusions: From the outside, the People’s Republic often appears repressive and merciless. But after six years as a correspondent, I know: the Chinese see great value in their system.” Their Georg Fahrion said:

After six years in the People’s Republic, I have reached a conclusion: the regime stands rock solid. It owes this partly to oppression and propaganda. But China’s stability is not founded on those alone.

Initially, I suspected the Chinese population could be divided into system profiteers versus the dissatisfied who walk around with a clenched fist in their pocket. Today, I know that most people embody both: they feel hemmed in and pressured by politics—and, in other respects, they appreciate what the system offers them.

They are less than thrilled about certain developments, such as the party-state’s increasing interference in their private lives and the push to drive women back into traditional maternal roles. In private conversations, Chinese citizens repeatedly express discontent with the leadership, including ruler Xi Jinping.

At the same time, the system delivers what many of its citizens desire. It satisfies not only material but also emotional needs. While I continue to perceive it as often unlovable, many Chinese feel a deep patriotism. To them, the People’s Republic—which often seems unbearable from the outside—appears at least equal, if not superior, to Western democracies.

This is not a particularly pleasant realization because it challenges our image of ourselves. To test it, I traveled one last time to three parts of the country whose residents view their state from very different perspectives: in Guizhou, many are poor; in Xinjiang, they are unfree; in Shanghai, they are privileged. I followed one central question: how legitimate do the Chinese find the system in which they live?

That ended the non-subscribers’ (the non-paywalled) sample-passage.

When I Googled a passage from near the end of that, “This is not a particularly pleasant realization because it challenges our image of ourselves. To test it, I traveled” the Google AI article at the top mis-stated the name of the author of the article as being Bernhard Zand, and then summarized on 9 April 2026 in response to my follow-up question “How did he answer his question “how legitimate do the Chinese find the system in which they live?”?” To this query, there was no error (other than yet again misrepresenting the article’s author):

Based on his travels through Guizhou, Xinjiang, and Shanghai, he identified several pillars that uphold this sense of legitimacy:

• Performance and Progress: For many, especially in places like Guizhou, the system’s legitimacy is tied to its ability to provide stability and material improvement. The dramatic reduction in poverty and the building of modern infrastructure serve as visible proof of the regime’s success.
• The “Greater Good” Trade-off: In Shanghai and other prosperous areas, a “silent contract” exists where citizens trade certain individual freedoms for personal advancement, national pride, and safety.
• National Sovereignty: The regime derives significant legitimacy from its role as a defender of Chinese sovereignty and its success in returning China to the status of a global superpower.
• Fear and Control: In regions like Xinjiang, Zand noted that while the system may be “unfree” and maintained through intense surveillance and repression, the sheer efficiency of that control contributes to the perception that the state’s power is absolute and unchallengeable. 

Ultimately, Zand’s answer was that the system’s legitimacy is not derived from elections, but from a combination of economic achievement, nationalistic pride, and a pervasive security apparatus that makes the regime appear both indispensable and inevitable to its citizens.

As I have noted, the article’s author was Georg Fahrion, but otherwise that summary was good.

In 2024, the NATO-affiliated poll was again done (polling between 20 February and 15 April of 2024), and titled “Democracy Perception Index 2024: The world’s largest annual study on how people perceive democracy”, and it reported (on its page 10) that 79% of Chinese said their country was “democratic,” and this was exceeded only by Vietnam’s 81% and Israel’s 83%. (Israel had been exterminating Gazans ever since 27 October 2023, which is a rather extreme example that even a genocidal nation can nonetheless view itself as being a democracy.) At the bottom of the ranking, were Iran, Venezuela, and Hungary. U.S. was a bit above the global average. Ever since April of 2025, that formerly NATO-affiliated poll and report has not been live on the Web but available only archived at archive.org, along with public appeals for donations from the public. So, the 2024 report might have been the last. But instead, the polling for it was switched to a different company, and the question in the prior report “Think about your country today. How democratic do you think it is? Slider: 0 – not at all democratic; 10 – very democratic?” (In the first report, 2018, it had been two questions, “Do you feel that the voice of people like you matters in politics?” and “Do you feel that your government is acting in your interest?”) was entirely eliminated (not changed, eliminated), not among the listed questions, in any type of wording (that are shown on pages 51 and 52 of the “Democracy Perceptions Index 2025” report. So, now, those reports are designed for NATO’s propaganda-purposes, not for authentic informational purposes.

On 21 March 2025, Jason Hickel headlined “Studies show strong public support for China’s political system” and delivered a terrific report, fully linking to his sources (like I do), and said (based on the NATO-affiliated report; he might not have known about the Edelman data, which showed China even more favorably),

Whatever one might think of this system, it is clear that most people in China seem to like it.

The results of the AoD study suggest that what matters most when it comes to people’s perceptions of democracy is not whether their country has Western-style elections, but whether they believe their government acts in the interest of most people. In many Western countries that have regular multi-party elections, people do not believe that their governments act in the interests of most people, and do not believe their countries are democratic. In China, people overwhelmingly perceive that their government acts in the interests of most people, and this may be key to high democracy perception there.

There really is no empirical support for the viewpoint that’s pumped within the U.S. empire — America and its colonies or ‘allies’ — that the empire’s countries are more democratic than China is. The reverse is almost certainly the case. China doesn’t brag like America does, but both its political performance and its economic performance have been far better than America’s in the past decade, at least. The U.S. empire is pumping a bill of goods that is, at best, only mediocre. Certainly it has been below the global average in economic performance ever since at least the turn of the Century. To view the United States as being a model for the world is, and for decades already has been, laughable. It’s become just a bunch of blatant lies.

————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.