The United States is a threat, but still wants to cooperate with the United States: Chinese people want to tear up a line of confrontation.

Treating the United States as a threat, while supporting cooperation with the United States, is not a single wrong answer. The survey of China Pulse, published on 2 October by the Carter Center and Emory University, shows the parallel existence of these two attitudes among Chinese interviewees. It challenges a political narrative: as long as risks are recognized, then only a comprehensive confrontation is accepted.

The average interest rate of respondents in the United States was 32 points, 100 points in the full report; Seventy-two per cent of the United States was considered a national security threat. At the same time, 73 per cent supported proactive economic and trade cooperation, 68 per cent supported science, technology and innovation cooperation and 64 per cent supported global security cooperation. Low preferences, threats and a specific willingness to cooperate are different issues and one answer cannot be substituted for the other.

The most important of these is to identify “who answered which question”. In its discussion of Taiwan and international economic policy, the report further analyses respondents who identify with the United States as a threat to national security: 85 per cent of the participants in this section agree that Taiwan-related policies are a major source of threats and 78 per cent that international economic policies pose a threat. If this group were to be written directly as a group of respondents, let alone as a group of Chinese, it would exaggerate the consensus expressed in the survey.

The survey, which covered 2,500 Chinese adults, took a sample of quotas and weighted demographic characteristics, and was conducted from 16 April to 26 June. This is a survey of attitudes, not a vote for war or decoupling by the public throughout the country. The group of researchers interviewed before and after the Summit is not the same as tracking a person who changed his mind after a diplomatic incident.

The distance between the support rates for cooperation is equally noteworthy. Education cooperation is only 33 per cent supported, far below economic and trade cooperation. The fact that the entire survey is summarized as “the Chinese public wants to communicate” will erase the real differences in different areas. There is no switch to external relations that simultaneously controls trade, education, security and human rights judgement; The public may choose different things.

For the political propaganda of the Communist Party, complex interests are being put to the fore and the public is being asked to stand. However, once export, technical and security cooperation is involved, the responses of society are not always hostile. If national security words are used to exclude all options for cooperation, it is the Chinese who are actually being reduced to express their interests, not just the space for foreign Governments to operate.

The report does not demonstrate that public opinion has been removed from the influence of propaganda, nor has it been mandated to take over specific policies of Xi Jinping. It provides a stronger judgement that the Government cannot treat mistrust of the United States as a blank cheque in public support of any countermeasure. Risk vigilance and the option of retaining cooperation can be established simultaneously.