Now a systemic rival? Inklings of complex representations of the EU in public survey data of Chinese urban residents

China–EU relations have become more challenging recently, especially with China being labeled a ‘systemic rival’. We therefore examine Chinese perceptions of the EU, particularly to see if recent developments have led to changing representations of the EU. This article specifically attempts to discern nascent changes in the complex representation of the EU amongst the general Chinese public by analyzing and comparing original data from two surveys of 3000 Chinese citizens in six major cities conducted in 2010 and in 2020. Our study uncovers the Chinese respondents’ perceptions of the EU in a multifaceted way by providing evidence that they are reconstructing the image of the EU and reconsidering its global role. The overall assessment of China–EU relations by the Chinese public remains one of general goodwill. However, there are more discerning and critical opinions of the EU from the respondents as well, suggesting a much more differentiated view toward the EU. In highlighting the continuities and changes, and situating this discussion within the theoretical lens of two specific forms of complex representation, role and image theories, this study provides a timely and topical discussion of the emergence of a complex portrayal of the EU.


Introduction
China has adopted a more proactive foreign policy in recent years, deviating from Deng Xiaoping's previous 'hide your strength and bide your time' approach. This has caused some tensions in its major relationships with important key global players such as the USA and the EU. Since the EU labeled China a ''systemic rival'' in a strategic outlook document published in 2019, the relationship between the two parties has been strained. Against this background, this article examines if there are changing representations of the EU in the Chinese general public as a result of the deteriorating relationship.
To do so, this article examines Chinese public opinion data to uncover the nuanced considerations of the EU amongst the Chinese population that reflect the construction of complex representations. The findings highlight various aspects of the Chinese perception of themselves that also perpetuate the construction of images and impressions about the EU. Also, the survey findings illustrate relational perspectives that are derived from an assessment of the various roles that the EU plays. These reveal the intricacies of how Chinese perceptions of 'the self' shape that of the EU as 'the other'. While the findings show that general sentiments toward the EU remain positive, there are some significant changes that reveal the multifaceted depictions of the EU in the opinions of the Chinese public.
In comparing the changes over time, this article makes an exploratory effort to provide empirical evidence for complex representations of Chinese popular opinions toward an external entity, in this specific context, the EU. This approach makes a valuable contribution by transcending the conventional representations of public opinions (toward foreign policy) which typically convey changes and continuities in quantitative and descriptive terms. Although such studies are of merit, they nevertheless lack a more discerning theoretical depth in analyzing the data. Therefore, this updated study generates new insights for examining China-EU relations, and also contributes a new analytical angle to studying perceptions of the EU more generally. Drawing on the analysis of perceptions in the sense of simple opinions that are gleaned from the survey data, we argue that these should be interpreted as evidence for complex representation in different forms and dimensions.
To this purpose, we offer a succinct discussion of the notion of complex representation in the next section, and clarify its different forms in the context of China-EU relations. After a brief discussion of existing studies and surveys of Chinese perceptions of the EU, we turn to the presentation of the empirical results in the following section, followed by a discussion that particularly highlights the forms of complex representations of the EU in China. In the conclusion, we reflect on the question of whether these findings imply that the future of China-EU relations will be characterized by systemic rivalry or rather by a more benign perception of a cautious partnership.
Our analysis uses original empirical data from two public opinion surveys, conducted in 2010 and 2020, respectively. 1 To ensure comparability of variables, the same core questionnaire was used for both surveys. In terms of data collection, both surveys targeted constituting representative population samples of around 500 urban residents each in six cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Chengdu and Nanning. These cities were chosen to represent different sizes (from megacities to small provincial capitals), different geographical locations (coastal and inland, northern and southern), as well as different levels of economic development (from highly developed to relatively underdeveloped) (see Dong et al. 2013: 5). The 2010 survey used a mix of stratified and random sampling procedures to recruit respondents who were then interviewed offline, and included 3019 valid cases (for details, see Dong et al. 2013). Due to the pandemic restrictions, face-to-face interviews were not possible in the 2020 survey. Instead, surveys were administered online on a sample of 3009 respondents, drawn from an existing large online panel of residents aged between 18 and 75 in the six cities. For the analysis, a weighing strategy was used to address the sampling bias resulting from the online nature of the 2020 survey (for details, see Dong et al. 2022). The margin of error for both surveys is at plus or minus 2 percentage points (at a confidence level of 0.95).

Complex representation in foreign policy analysis
Foreign policy studies have benefitted from new analytical tools that adopt narratives, roles, and images as theoretical lenses. These provide different conceptual formulations to understand the phenomenon of complex representation. While it is beyond the scope and objective of this article to comprehensively discuss and unpack the complexities embedded in each of these forms, a concise overview is necessary to shed light on the theoretical underpinnings of the survey findings.
Impelled by the linguistic turn in social science, the concept of narratives has gained currency in many disciplines, including International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), enhancing their discursive analysis of foreign policy rhetoric and decisions. Narratives provide a critical basis for the construction of coherent national identities (Kaiser and McMahon 2017) and have become a useful interpretative method for research on EU integration (Cloet 2017;Gilbert 2008;McMahon and Kaiser 2021).
IR and FPA scholarship have recently revived the 1970s concept of role theory (Harnisch et al. 2011). By emphasizing the roles that individuals, nation-states, and other non-state actors play, role theory ''offers the possibility of integrating FPA and IR theory'' and enabling a more nuanced analysis by explicating the interaction between agents and structure (Thies and Breuning 2012). Scholars have also utilized role theory to examine the perception of the EU's role as a normative power (Manners 2001;Whitman 2011) and security actor (Wolczuk and Delcour 2018). Particularly, values and principles, such as democracy, integration, freedom, human rights, etc., form a crucial part of the EU's identity and influence the various global roles that it plays. land) (see Dong et al. 2022).
Footnote 1 (continued) Image theory in International Relations explains why countries, especially those engaged in an antagonistic relationship, would develop certain images or stereotypes about each other that will ''justify a nation's desired reaction or treatment toward another nation'' (Alexander et al. 2005). According to Herrmann (2013), the utility of image theory lies in its ability to inform the study of perceptions through the interaction between ''goals, relative power and relative status'', three underlying core aspects of international relationships. These three factors were detected in our survey findings (e.g., the EU's role in international affairs). The assessment of the EU's influence and power by the Chinese citizens seemed to suggest a reconstructed image of the EU as suffering from a declining global status, especially vis-à-vis the augmented self-image of the Chinese.
In the context of this article, narratives will take a back seat in relation to the other two forms of complex representation, roles and images, since the latter two emerged a lot more clearly in the survey findings. Moreover, the relationship between China and the EU has recently been characterized simultaneously as both benign and belligerent, thus generating important implications for how the Chinese perceive the EU. This requires a reconsideration of the EU's role in international affairs, as well as a reassessment of its image and global status as a normative power.
Chinese public opinions reveal projections of the individual's self-image which are important to draw out since they can inform us about the strength of the Chinese national identity. In particular, nationalistic sentiments (Weiss 2019) relating to China's rise and increasingly influential position in the world, as well as social economic factors, can play a substantial role in molding the worldviews of ordinary Chinese citizens. All these various aspects reflect Chinese self-perceptions, which can shape the perspectives of the survey respondents toward the EU. This is important because there is a dynamic formation of opinions through the 'othering' effect. As Wang (2009) argues, due to limited Chinese understanding of the EU (as compared to the US), perceptions are often formed through the lens of how they view themselves. Also, studies have examined the issue of self-perceptions vis-à-vis 'others' (Glynn et al. 2018;Lucarelli 2008) in foreign policy opinion. They highlighted the importance of considering personal factors relating to identity, self-perception, even values and position (Galtung 1964) when studying citizens' views about the external sphere of affairs. In this study, we consider the formulation of self-perception to be influenced by factors such as knowledge and assessments of other countries or groupings (like the EU), as well as by major disruptive events such as the current pandemic.
Uncovering the representation of the EU's handling of the pandemic also allows a unique glimpse into how the Chinese perceive the EU as a global governance actor. The EU as a good global health actor can be derived from Manners' (2006) idea of the EU's self-image. This consists of a complex and sometimes even contradictory set of principles and values, such as good governance and sustainability.
At the same time, the perceptions of China-EU relations also depend on China's relations with external powers in a relational sense. This is because Chinese citizens will evaluate their impressions of the EU vis-à-vis China's relation to other countries as well. Chinese public opinions, then, can be shaped by the existing representations of the EU, which are driven by a complex multitude of roles, norms and images that the EU plays, embodies, and reflects. For example, Chaban and Elgström (2014) scrutinized existing studies of Chinese perceptions of the EU and identified the role of the EU as a self-centered political power whose status, however, has been declining vis-à-vis the USA. More importantly, they also remarked that the Chinese public harbored an image of the political entity 'EU' that corresponds to a broader idea of Europe that retains its cultural appeal to them.

Studying Chinese public opinion on matters of foreign policy
A conventional definition of public opinion (Clawson and Oxley 2020) refers to it as ''simply the sum of aggregation of private opinions on any particular issue or set of issues'' (Monroe 1975). Although public opinion typically refers to the prevalent perspectives of the general public summed up by opinion polls, it can also be expressed in the interactive discussions and debates surrounding the issues of concern. A multitude of factors can shape and transform public opinion, in the process also influencing the function that it can take on, such as its impact on policy making. The idea that foreign policy is contingent on public perceptions has been supported by scholars such as Robinson (2008), drawing on older studies (Monroe 1975;Page and Shapiro 1983) that established the relationship between public opinion changes and changes in policies. These studies were, however, based on the American experience, and recent research has challenged the congruence between public opinion and policy. For example, Barabas (2016) cautioned against overstating the impact of public opinion on policy. Also, not all opinions engender the same impact on policy decisions (Gilens 2012;Rasmussen et al. 2018).
This is arguably even more true in non-democratic regimes, where policy-makers can be assumed to care much less about public opinion than their elected counterparts in democratic systems. Hence, the causal link between Chinese public opinion and China's foreign policy is not always straightforward, and efforts to disentangle the intricacies of Chinese public opinion in relation to its influence on foreign policy decisions making remain elusive (Reilly 2014). For instance, Weiss (2019) found that Chinese public attitudes, as conveyed in the five surveys she examined, illustrated a proclivity to a more hawkish foreign policy. She thus concluded that public opinion may not be such an important driver of the Chinese government's foreign policy decisions. In addition, it is argued that China follows the footsteps of many authoritarian regimes that curtail public opinion with censorship, which contributes to its irrelevance for policy-making (Kalathil and Boas 2001;Tai 2014).
While this might suggest that Chinese public opinion is not worth studying, it has been argued that public opinion still matters for Chinese foreign policy (Fewsmith and Rosen 2001), although the party elites dominate the decision-making process. This is the argument that our paper adopts, to then further examine the changes in Chinese public opinion in relation to the complex representation of the EU. Indeed, the introduction of commercial media and internet has amplified the influence of public opinion in China in general (Shirk 2011). Some scholars such as Liu (2019) even regard Chinese public opinion as exemplifying a mass political culture. Lei (2018) took the argument further by remarking that beyond suppressing public opinion, the Chinese party state has also "facilitated the growth of public opinion in both intentional and unintentional ways.'' For instance, the control of state media and propaganda represents an intentional way of cultivating public opinion in a certain sense, so that public opinion can still create an impact when it coincides and coheres with the interests of the political elites (Fewsmith and Rosen 2001).
In this sense, it is actually in the interest of the Chinese government to allow the expression of Chinese public opinion that helps to enhance governance and control (Thomas 2019). The proliferation of internet public opinion can enable the Chinese party-state to collect public opinion for social management (Creemers 2017) more extensively and efficiently. Therefore, Chinese public opinion does not function independently as in democratic systems. According to the consultative authoritarian literature (He and Thøgersen 2010;Teets 2013;Truex 2017), Chinese citizens are invited to offer their opinions through deliberative participation on specific policy issues to engender political efficacy (Ergenc 2014), but without threatening the extant one-party state system (He and Warren 2011). Public opinion thus can provide crucial information to assist the authorities in decision making and enable them to be more responsive (Qiaoan and Teets 2020) to the demands of the people.
In the past decades, many surveys on Chinese public opinion have been undertaken to gauge popular sentiments on other countries and/or their relations with China (Cunningham et al. 2020;Tang 2005). Many of these studies tried to discern attitudes relating to nationalism or sentiments about particular countries. Nationalism-as a powerful narrative of a country's identity and place in the world-is a particularly salient dimension when examining China's difficult relationship with various countries. Japan is a good case in point. Conflicting claims over the Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands have led to anti-Japan protests in China. In view of the increasingly antagonistic relationship between China and the USA, many studies have also focused on eliciting Chinese views on the USA (Chen 2001;Panda 2020). Patriotic expressions of Chinese public opinion can support changes in foreign policy direction as well. For example, Ghiselli (2021) argued that Chinese public opinion has been galvanizing around safeguarding 'China's interest frontiers' in its international engagement, which in turn justified the Chinese leadership in adopting a more muscular foreign policy.
Additionally, surveys on Chinese perceptions of foreign entities such as the EU are increasingly prevalent in view of the increasing engagement and tensions between China and the EU. Some of the more recent efforts to decipher the Chinese attitude toward the EU included the survey by Chang and Pieke (2018) that specifically delved into the changes in Chinese policy perspectives on the EU and China-EU relations. Zhang's recent critical overview (2020) of progress in studying Chinese perceptions of the EU showed that these studies demonstrated a more consistent view of the EU's international role. Nevertheless, they also showed significant variation in the categories of knowledge about the EU, as well as about other relevant concepts and events pertaining to the EU and China-EU relations. The current scholarship has started to expand its theoretical toolbox of analysis. A German study (Stumbaum et al. 2015) found a gap between the Asian elites' perception of the EU's role as a security actor and the EU's own role assignment. Interestingly, Eva Schilling (2012) has detected that the EU suffers from an image deficit (in the eyes of the Chinese), due to its handling of the sovereign debt crisis. Similarly, Lai and Zhang (2013) also found that the EU's image as a powerful global economic player was weakened by the Eurozone crisis. These predominantly positivist perception studies of Chinese views on the EU mostly focused on presenting a descriptive and limited snapshot of the China-EU relations. Therefore, they have been unable to engage with the deeper issues (such as identity construction, narratives, roles ascription, etc.) behind the social psychological processes of opinion formation. Utilizing the lens of complex representation to analyze Chinese public opinion of the EU bridges two strands of inter-related literature which, unfortunately, rarely speak to each other. The positivist approach to foreign policy analysis through quantitative analysis of public opinion will be enriched by adopting a more interdisciplinary lens that borrows from social psychology, involving the examination of roles, image, framing, etc. As such, this article intends to add a layered analytical dimension to a typically quantitative survey of perceptions. This means that the findings do not only demonstrate continuities and changes over time, but also provide some evidence of a broader social construction of representation of the EU. For example, a more relational and considered representation of the EU can be gleaned from the popular opinions relating to recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic (Byun et al. 2021).

Findings: toward changing representation of the EU
Our survey findings illustrated interesting and novel insights. The items relating to identity, knowledge and impressions of the EU, as well as the assessment of EU's global role, provided an important context to analyze Chinese public opinion of the EU. Overall, these findings have already intimated inklings of complex representation of the EU. The Chinese respondents showed more nuanced and differentiated opinions about the EU's roles, and also with reference to China's growing global influence.

Chinese identity and nationalism
Identity statements provide insights into the level of nationalistic sentiments and strength of Chinese identity. The comparison of responses on identity statements between the 2010 and 2020 surveys (Table 1) reveal increasing percentages of respondents who 'strongly agree' to all questions highlighting pride in being Chinese. Significantly, there was a marked decrease (from 21.6 to 9.3%) in the percentage of respondents who felt that China has displayed weak behavior on the global stage. It is interesting that the self-image of the Chinese has clearly been transformed, now displaying a lot more pride and confidence. However, it is crucial to consider how this shift in the relative strength of China will correspond to changing views of the EU that reflect the image construction of 'the other'.

Knowledge and impressions of the EU
When comparing the level of basic knowledge of the respondents on the EU between 2010 and 2020, as seen in Table 2, there has been a striking increase in all the questions relating to this area, with a big jump in the knowledge level for questions about the EU's membership (9.3 to 38.7%) and its composition (2.0 to 41.4%) in particular. The magnitude of this change attests to the effects of the phenomenal economic growth in China over the last few decades, which has led to rising education among the population. Moreover, the higher level of affluence enabled more Chinese to travel or even study and work abroad. Also, this can reflect the enhanced cooperation between the EU and China on many fronts, from business to education and tourism. For example, the number of people travelling from EU countries to China has increased annually from 1.4 million in 2012 to 1.75 million in 2018 (Eurostat 2020). More importantly, this remarkable increase in knowledge of the EU can arguably enhance the respondents' ability to assess the role of the EU in international affairs in a more informed and differentiated way.
Impressions of the EU have remained stable over the past decade. Overall, Fig. 1 shows that the impressions of the Chinese public of the EU have not dramatically changed, except for a significant increase (from 9.5 to 19.7%) in the proportions of those who have a 'very favorable' impression of the EU. Changes in the categories of 'very unfavorable' or 'unfavorable' impressions are within the error margins of the surveys and therefore not significant. Overall, the upward trend of very positive sentiments toward the EU could possibly be due to the generally positive collaborative relationship that the EU enjoys with China, at least at the time when the survey was conducted. Alternatively, such goodwill could also be attributed to the EU's normative soft powers (Chen and Song 2012;Michalski 2005;Wang 2009) through the strength and popularity of its culture, values and style of business. The shifting sentiments toward the nature of China-EU relations as reflected in Table 3 are also noteworthy. While fewer respondents described China-EU relations as one of friendship, partnership or rivalry, the increase in viewing China-EU relations as one of stakeholders can be telling in terms of how the relationship is now deemed to be more equal. This may also be the effect of the Chinese adjusting their conceived image of the EU, from an entity that has previously enjoyed a more authoritative role in taking the lead, to a weaker image of the EU vis-à-vis the rise of a more confident China which is more assured of its capabilities.

Assessment of the EU's role and the relational view of the EU's global influence
The complex layers of the EU's role and image, as received and perceived by the Chinese respondents, are examined in questions relating to the EU's role in different aspects of global governance. The EU has been associated with various ideational roles in the international arena relating to sustainable development, peace, and good governance, just to name a few, and these values and principles form the basis of its self-image (Manners 2006). As for the Chinese, they have held the EU in high regard as a credible global player. However, they revised their opinion in the wake of the Euro sovereign debt crisis, which exposed the weakness and disunity of the Union (Schilling 2012). As shown in Table 4, there has been a consistent decrease across the board in viewing the EU's role positively in all aspects. The most significant drop relates especially to 'the international economy' (from 75.4% in 2010 to 58.1% in 2020), 'protection of the environment' (81.6-61.7%), 'fighting poverty' (62.2-37.8%) and 'fighting international terrorism' (62.9-37.4%). Such findings lend support to the emergence of a complex form of representation of the EU amongst the Chinese public. They seem to have undertaken a considerable reexamination of the EU's prominence and power in various global roles, and are more critical of the EU's lack of performance. These findings highlighted a more ambivalent set of opinions regarding the different areas of EU's engagement in international affairs that contrasted significantly with the previous overwhelmingly positive impressions of the EU.
So how does the EU compare, in relation not only to other major powers, but also in view of China's growing ambitions in the global political and economic arenas? It is clear from Table 5 that there has been a considerable increase (from 4-14.1%) in the percentage of Chinese citizens who now see the EU as the most influential in world politics. This is worth highlighting, especially in view of the big dip (from 71.7-44.2%) in the percentage of respondents who regard the USA as the most influential. Although the majority still see the USA as the most influential player globally, a more than tenfold jump in the percentage of Chinese people who see China as the most influential is indicative of growing Chinese confidence. Importantly, as compared to 2010, when more respondents (4%) thought that the EU was more politically influential than China (2.2%), in 2020, many more respondents (25%) actually thought that China is more influential in global politics than the EU (14.1%). Chinese perception of the EU's capabilities in this area are shifting, as the Chinese reconstruct their image of the EU from a powerful to a weaker global actor in juxtaposition to their own augmented self-image of increasing standing. Table 5 shows that more Chinese considered that the EU was the most influential global economic actor, with a substantial increase from 6.5% to 16.9%, representing an almost threefold increase. A plurality (46.1%) in 2020 still saw the USA as most influential, although this is a significant decrease from the 72.6% who expressed this view in 2010. Moreover, given the strength of the Chinese economy, bullish sentiments about China's dominance in the world economic sphere are palpable, with an almost doubling (from 15.8-30.5%) in responses that considered China the most influential economy worldwide.
These results, together with the findings about increasing Chinese nationalism, can help explain the drop in positive opinions toward the EU in international affairs above. The stark changes in popular Chinese views about the EU conform to the Chinese self-perceptions, and specifically to current expectation of a rising China. Citizens display growing pride and conviction that China is wielding much more global influence. This has modified Chinese expectations of the influence that the EU exercises globally.

External global events
The Covid-19 pandemic has been covered extensively in media since its global outbreak in early 2020. Reports on China and the EU's handling of the pandemic not only contributed to the construction of the Chinese self-image, but also to the reconsideration of China-EU relations. The observations garnered from opinions about these reports will generate deeper insights into how the pandemic impacted upon Chinese perceptions of China-EU relations. The pandemic has indeed further complicated these relations, as the positive aspect of China's attempt at mask and vaccine diplomacy in Europe was undermined by the controversy engendered by the virus origin investigation and allegations that were deemed offensive to China.   Therefore, we included a few questions in the 2020 survey 2 relating to the general opinions of the Chinese public on the Covid-19 responses of the EU. Results are shown in Table 6. They offer a deeper examination of how the complex unfolding of pandemic diplomatic efforts and the backlash against virus origins allegations have affected Chinese perception of the EU. Firstly, Table 6 shows that about half of the respondents (50.3%) expressed negative sentiments about the EU's responses (and also Italy specifically at 50.6%) to Covid-19. Secondly, juxtaposing the perceptions of profound events like the pandemic with the change in Chinese bilateral relations reveals the more considered reflection of respondents on China-EU relations, based on topical events.

Discussion and conclusion
Amidst the continuities and changes that were palpable from the findings, what is striking is the emergence of a complex portrayal of the EU when comparing the findings of the two surveys that were conducted 10 years apart. Compared to 2010, the 2020 survey findings reveal a Chinese public whose knowledge of the EU has increased substantially. This may help explain why Chinese public opinion was more discerning and also sometimes more contradictory in 2020 than in 2010. At the same time, the overall optimistic sentiments of China-EU relations and the positive impressions of the EU mirrored those of the 2010 findings, although twice as many Chinese respondents harbored a very high opinion about the EU in 2020 compared to 2010. Also, a reevaluation of the image of the EU seems to have taken place between 2010 and 2020, as the clear evidence of a higher level of Chinese nationalistic pride suggests. This current display of augmented pride by the Chinese citizens could be a sign of confidence that China can conduct the better and more equal partnership with the EU that a higher percentage of respondents identified in the second survey. Moreover, increased nationalistic feelings reflected the recalibration of Chinese identity from a marginalized global player to an active participant in the international arena (Qin 2010) alongside other prominent powers such as the EU. A more fine-grained examination of specific aspects of the EU's role in international affairs also suggests a reassessment, by the Chinese public, of the EU's global role and its projected self-image. Consistently lower assessments and a higher percentage of 'depends on conditions' replies express a lot more criticism and reservation in Chinese impressions of the EU's role as a global power in specific areas. This undermines the previously held opinion of Europe as a credible entity that China could cooperate closely with to establish a multipolar multilateral system (Stumbaum et al. 2015;Zhang 2016), especially in the wake of the Cold War when the USA emerged as the sole superpower and global hegemon. In particular, the huge drop in positive views of the EU's role in the international economy, when juxtaposed against the substantial increase in perceiving China as the most influential country in the world economy, is worth closer scrutiny. The declining Chinese faith in the EU as a global economic power can be explained by the Euro sovereign debt crisis which dampened Chinese enthusiasm for the European economic governance model. Although the Chinese considered the EU to be a strong global power due to its economic strength and economic governance model (Schilling 2012), Chen (2012) argues that many Chinese observers of the EU started to doubt and reconsider the economic status of the EU within the global economic system during the Euro economic crisis (Lai and Zhang 2013). The EU's infighting and disarray in handling this crisis clearly undermined its image in Chinese eyes as a strong and competent economic block.
Moreover, our results illustrated the growing confidence of China and its citizens, arguably due to the more prominent role China is playing right now with its increasing economic and political capabilities. Examples of this include China's pledge to cut carbon emissions as part of the Paris agreement in 2016, the Chinese economy continued resilience, despite slowing growth, the CCP's declaration of the successful eradication of absolute poverty in 2021, and even its more controversial 'antiterrorist' efforts in Xinjiang. Moreover, Chinese perception of the EU's position and influence in world politics and economy (vis-à-vis the USA and China) showed a rise from 2010 to 2020 in Chinese people believing that China, instead of the EU, will be the second most influential actor in world politics after the USA.
The rather big increase in the percentage of respondents who replied with 'depends on conditions' for all areas regarding the EU's global role is also remarkable. This is a sign of a more discerning Chinese public, which is not ready to cast a dichotomous judgement of positive or negative sentiments, and would prefer to situate the issue within a broader context and conditions. Also, such ambivalence may be evidence that the Chinese are reconsidering the role that they previously ascribed to the EU, of a competent multilateral and economic role model. Interestingly, even though the new questions about Covid-19 suggest the Chinese public did not think highly of the EU's management of the crisis, the majority of them were actually quite optimistic about change in China-EU relations as a result of the pandemic. This is a little puzzling in view of how there were some unhappy moments from the EU side. Europeans saw the 'mask diplomacy', which China extended bilaterally to some European countries, as trying to divide the EU (Verma 2020) since it made the EU look bad for not helping initially. Perhaps a plausible explanation could be the Chinese government propaganda efforts toward Chinese citizens. Research has found, for instance, that automated bots created 37% of the hashtags (Campbell 2020) expressing Italian gratitude toward China. Not only did this boost the Chinese government's credibility, but it simultaneously generated goodwill (toward Italy) amongst the Chinese people, who appreciated the gratitude supposedly expressed by Italy. Although this pertained to Italy, it may very well extend to the EU as well. Studies have shown how the mask diplomacy functioned as an opportunity to carry out a potent domestic propaganda through the expression of gratitude and public recognition of Chinese aid (Kowalski 2021).
Some limitations have to be acknowledged and discussed. Given that public opinion is widely considered to be unpredictable (Moy and Bosch 2013), as well as susceptible to social construction (Krippendorff 2005) and major conflicts (Almond 1950), the consistency over time of the perspectives presented in this survey cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, the Chinese public opinions expressed can only be a snapshot of the time of the survey (December 2020). Subsequent events and developments, such as the sanctions and counter-sanctions (March 2021) between China and the EU over human rights violations, could have shifted the views highlighted here. Nevertheless, adopting the framework of complex representation helps to generate insightful reflections about the similarities and difference between the surveys from the two time periods. Moreover, the overall findings also demonstrate that Chinese perceptions of the EU have remained relatively stable since 2010. Although this article is not able to extend its scope to investigate other aspects of Chinese public opinion, the data garnered from this new survey can provide the basis for examining other compelling questions. For example, the gap between the opinions of elites and citizens that Dong (2014) has previously identified would be interesting to study further. This could be undertaken not only by a closer examination of socio-demographic factors influencing Chinese perceptions of the EU, but maybe also by utilizing the survey findings in combination with a text analysis of official documents to analyze elites' opinions. Furthermore, the scope of the survey could be enlarged to encompass media analyses and even extended to study other countries, as an EU study in 2015 did (Barcevičius 2015).
Amid the ongoing pandemic and an increasingly tense milieu of suspicion and critiques from the European side, the relationship between China and the EU continues to unfold. Such heightening tensions, together with the concurrent demonstration of growing Chinese confidence and assertiveness, imply that the perspectives of the Chinese public toward the EU will continue to be an important bellwether for gauging the prospects for relations. For now, the China-EU relationship as gleaned from the survey data analysis suggests more of a cautious partnership. In time to come, the interplay between Chinese self-perception and perception of the EU, in tandem with the confluence of global events and Chinese relations with major powers, can further reinforce the complex representation of the EU. It will be a matter of time before one can tell if the label of 'systemic rivalry' becomes a more pernicious self-fulfilling prophesy that will adversely affect China-EU relations.