A new Pew survey finds people in several developing nations trust China more than the US to regulate AI

[Layla81]

A major new Pew Research Center survey spanning more than 50,000 people across 37 countries, conducted between February and June 2026, has uncovered a striking geographic split in who the world actually trusts to govern artificial intelligence responsibly. In six specific nations, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, respondents expressed noticeably greater confidence in China's ability to regulate AI responsibly than in either the United States or the European Union.

The numbers get sharper when you narrow the focus specifically to middle income countries. Across seven such nations surveyed, the median trust figures came out at 43 percent for China, 35 percent for the United States and 34 percent for the European Union, a gap that puts China meaningfully ahead of both Western regulatory blocs in exactly the part of the world where AI adoption decisions are likely to matter most over the coming decade given how much growth and infrastructure development is still ahead of these economies.

Pew researcher Moira Fagan offered a fairly straightforward explanation for the shift, attributing it largely to rising favourable views of China more broadly within middle income nations rather than anything specific to AI policy itself. She also flagged an interesting correlation running the other direction in wealthier countries, noting that people in richer nations are considerably more likely to say they have read or heard a lot about AI, and that higher awareness of the technology tracks fairly closely with greater anxiety about job losses specifically, suggesting familiarity with AI breeds more concern rather than more confidence in any single country's ability to manage it well.

The job displacement anxiety numbers back that pattern up clearly. Roughly 70 percent of adults surveyed in Australia, South Korea and the United States believe AI will eliminate jobs within the next two decades, and younger respondents between 18 and 34 consistently express noticeably greater displacement anxiety than older age groups across the survey as a whole, a generational split that makes sense given how directly entry level and early career roles are the ones most frequently cited as vulnerable to automation.

Overall public sentiment toward AI comes across as genuinely split down the middle rather than dominated by either optimism or dread. Just 37 percent of respondents describe themselves as primarily worried about AI, while a larger 41 percent describe holding a more balanced mix of concern and genuine excitement about what the technology might deliver, suggesting the dominant global mood right now is closer to cautious ambivalence than either the utopian or doomer framings that tend to dominate media coverage of the topic.

Do people trust China more than the US on AI?www.thenews.com.pk

[Rustic Stuart]

Fagan's point about this tracking broader favourable views of China rather than being a specific verdict on AI policy competence is an important nuance that gets lost whenever headlines frame this purely as a trust in AI governance story. People are really answering a question about China generally, AI just happens to be the specific lens this survey used to ask it.

[Scarlett89]

The correlation between awareness and anxiety in wealthier countries is fascinating and slightly counterintuitive, you would maybe expect more information to produce more confidence rather than more worry, but it seems like actually understanding what these systems can do is what drives the job loss concern rather than ignorance driving unfounded fear.

[IonStorm99]

43 versus 35 versus 34 percent trust numbers are close enough that I would not read this as a dramatic geopolitical shift just yet, but the direction of travel, China ahead of both the US and EU specifically in middle income countries, is still a meaningful signal about where global soft power on tech governance might be heading.

[Southern Joanne]

Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Bank all showing this pattern together suggests something more structural than coincidence, whether that is shared economic relationships with China, similar media environments, or genuinely comparable levels of exposure to US foreign policy would be worth digging into further.

[Highland Builder]

37 percent worried against 41 percent holding a mixed view of concern and excitement is a much less dramatic split than most AI coverage would have you believe exists. The loudest voices in this debate tend to be the extremes, but the actual median global position looks a lot more ambivalent and measured than either the doomer or utopian camps online.

[Anthony_51]

Younger respondents showing more job displacement anxiety than older generations makes complete sense given how concentrated automation risk is in entry level roles specifically. Older workers already established in their careers have a very different risk exposure than someone just entering the job market right now.

[Stuart78]

Would be interesting to see this survey broken down by which specific AI applications people were thinking about when answering, general purpose chatbots, autonomous weapons systems and industrial automation are wildly different categories of risk and opportunity that probably should not get averaged into one single trust number

[IronSpectre88]

Tanget alert, but did anyone else notice how the methodologies for these cross-cultural tech surveys never quite capture the local nuances of what "regulation" even means to a citizen in Kenya versus someone sitting in Ohio? It feels like comparing apples to quantum computers