90% Chinese support govt ‘retaliation’ against India, 35% angry over goods boycott — survey

A survey by Global Times finds that Chinese view India as fourth ‘most favorable neighbour’ and more than 70% believe India is being too hostile to China.

The national flags of China and India | Representational Image | Photo: Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg

New Delhi: Over 70 per cent Chinese believed that India was being too hostile to them and nearly 90 per cent supported the Chinese government’s “retaliation against Indian provocations”, according to a survey.

Conducted by the Global Times and China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, the survey was published Thursday. It was conducted from 17-20 August and 1,960 participants in China were surveyed.

Executed by market survey company DATA 100, the survey covered 10 major cities of China — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Shenyang, Wuhan, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Qingdao and Kunming.

In the survey, nearly 50 per cent of the respondents also said that India was too dependent on China economically, while 70 per cent people said that the anti-China sentiment in India was too excessive.

Other findings

On the boycott of Chinese goods in India, 35.3 per cent of the participants said that they were very angry about it and that China should take reciprocal measures, while 29.3 per cent of the participants said that India was not serious about the same and it should be ignored.

On the border front, nearly 90 per cent of the participants supported China in striking back if there were more border conflicts in future. And 30 per cent of the respondents said that border conflicts were the main obstacle in India-China relations, followed by US interference and “India’s hostility towards China”. Last in the list of obstacles between the two countries was the Tibet issue, the survey stated. 

According to the survey, India was fourth on the list of China’s “most favorable neighbours” after Russia, Pakistan and Japan. 

On the long-term future of bilateral relations between the two countries, the survey stated that 25 per cent of the participants thought that it would improve, while 10 per cent believed it would not. 

About the short-term future of India-China relations, more than 20 per cent of the participants were of the opinion that the relations would not improve, while 8.6 per cent respondents thought it would improve. Just 9 per cent of the respondents said that both countries should maintain the status quo.