New Delhi: Up to 78 percent of Asian Americans have a favourable view of the US, with 44 percent of them having “very favourable” views, a survey by American think-tank Pew Research Center has found.
The survey of 7,006 American Asian adults (all individuals who self-identified as Asian), conducted between July 2022 and January 2023 in six languages, assessed their views on the US as well as their own homelands and other Asian nations.
According to the survey report published Wednesday, 86 percent of Indian Americans hold a favourable opinion of the US, with only 1 percent having a “very unfavourable” opinion. Meanwhile, 76 percent of Indian Americans hold a favourable opinion of India, with 51 percent of these holding a “very favourable” view.
The report pointed out that majority of the surveyed US Asian adults had a favourable view of Japan (68 percent), the Republic of Korea (62 percent) and Taiwan (56 percent), and up to 37 percent had favourable views of Vietnam and the Philippines.
On India, only 33 percent of those surveyed had favourable views, 41 percent reported a neutral view and 23 per cent view it unfavourably.
The opinion on China was predominantly negative, the report stated, with only 20 percent holding a favourable view, and 52 percent holding an unfavourable opinion.
It further said that around half of the surveyed Asian Americans (53 percent) stated that the US will continue to be the world’s leading economic power over the next decade, while 36 percent said China would be the leading economic power globally over the next decade. Only 4 percent believed that India would be the leading economic power over the next decade.
The main ethnicities that the survey examined were Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Indian Americans, Japanese Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Korean Americans and Vietnamese Americans. Together these seven groups account for 81 percent of all American Asian adults, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the US Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey.
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On ancestral homeland & India
Most Asian Americans hold a favourable view of their ancestral homeland except for Chinese Americans, according to the survey.
Up to 95 percent Taiwanese Americans and 92 percent Japanese Americans stated their opinion as favourable in regard to their ancestral homeland.
On the other hand, less than half of Chinese Americans (41 percent) viewed China favourably. In comparison, the Chinese American respondents held the US, Japan, Taiwan and Republic of Korea as more favourable.
Chinese Americans’ favourable view of Taiwan is noteworthy given the rising tensions between China and Taiwan.
On India, 34 percent of Chinese Americans had an unfavourable view.
Among other ethnicities, 31 percent Filipino Americans had favourable views of India, as well as 25 percent of Vietnamese Americans and 24 percent of Japanese Americans.
Up to 17 percent of Korean Americans, Taiwanese Americans and Chinese Americans had somewhat favourable views on India.
On moving to homeland
While almost all the American Asian adults surveyed viewed their ancestral homelands favourably, 72 percent said they would not move to their ancestral homelands. In comparison, only 26 percent said they would.
The responses to this query also varied across origin groups. For instance, 33 percent of Indian Americans were willing to return to their ancestral homelands whereas only 16 percent of Chinese Americans were willing for the same, according to the survey.
“Interest in moving to their homelands is lower among immigrants who have been in the US for a longer time,” the survey report said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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