Australians are losing faith in a key ally and maintaining distrust of China, survey finds

A new opinion poll shows Australians continue to regard China with wary distrust, while faith in the United States has ebbed in the lead-up to November’s presidential election.

Every year, the Lowy Institute think tank surveys Australians to see what they think about global affairs and key foreign policy questions.

This year’s poll confirms Australian attitudes towards Beijing have warmed only slightly since the bilateral relationship began to thaw after Labor took power in 2022.

Fifty-three per cent of the Australians surveyed in this year’s poll said they saw China as more of a security threat than an economic partner — an almost identical result to last year.

It was a slight improvement for Beijing on the results in 2021 and 2022, when 63 per cent of Australians saw China as a security threat.

But before 2020, Australia regarded China much more positively; for example, 82 per cent of Australians said they saw it as more of an economic opportunity in 2018, with only 12 per cent saying they saw it as more of a military threat.

Seventy-one per cent of those polled in this year’s survey also said it was either “somewhat” or “very” likely that China would become a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years — only a slight dip from the 75 per cent who said the same thing in 2022 and 2023.

Results reflect ‘new territory’ with China

The poll’s author, the Lowy Institute’s Ryan Neelam, said while Australian attitudes toward China had softened slightly, there was now “probably an element of suspicion baked in” in the wake of the relationship hitting its lowest point around 2020.