Asia & the Pacific

Only three-in-ten Americans say it is a very serious problem for the United States if Xi Jinping assumes a third term as China’s leader.

The Chinese Communist Party is preparing for its 20th National Congress, an event likely to result in an unprecedented third term for President Xi Jinping. Since Xi took office in 2013, opinion of China in the U.S. and other advanced economies has turned more negative. How did it get to be this way?

While 26% of U.S. adults became more negative toward China between 2020 and 2022, 17% became more positive toward it.

Despite the many depressing stories dominating the international news cycle, there is also a note of positivity among survey respondents in views of the UN, the benefits of international cooperation for solving problems and the importance of common values for bringing nations together.

India’s artificially wide ratio of baby boys to baby girls – which arose in the 1970s from the use of prenatal diagnostic technology to facilitate sex-selective abortions – now appears to be narrowing. Son bias has declined sharply among Sikhs, while Christians continue to have a natural balance of sons and daughters.

A median of 70% of adults across 19 countries say children in their country will be worse off than their parents financially when they grow up.

A median of 68% across 19 countries think their country has done a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, with majorities saying this in every country surveyed except Japan. However, most also believe the pandemic has created greater divisions in their societies and exposed weaknesses in their political systems – and these view are especially common in the U.S.

In this companion documentary, Asian American participants described navigating their own identity. These participants were not part of our focus group study but were similarly sampled to tell their own stories.

The stories shared by participants in our video documentary reflect opinions, experiences and perspectives similar to those we heard in the focus groups. Watch extended interviews that were not included in our documentary but present thematically relevant stories.

Use this quote sorter to read how focus group participants answered the question, “What does it mean to be you in America?”