Edney, K. orcid.org/0000-0001-8267-6714 and Turcsányi, R. (2024) Public attitudes to China in the ‘Five Eyes': unpacking views across the Anglosphere security community. Australian Journal of International Affairs. ISSN 1035-7718
Abstract
China is an important security concern for the United States and its allies, including the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group that is sometimes described as the core of the ‘Anglosphere’ security community. While we would expect securitising discourses at the elite level to reproduce some common perceptions of China, to what extent are attitudes to China shared across the publics in these countries? In this article, we unpack public attitudes towards China in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Drawing on the results of public opinion surveys we conducted in 2022, we note areas of similarity and divergence then drill down into the drivers of public attitudes. We show that even though aggregate attitudes towards China in the five countries appear to align with official security discourses, this hides significant variation in how different groups within these societies view China. In particular, ethnic minorities and recent immigrants, along with members of higher socio-economic classes, urban residents, and young people, tend to be more positive towards China. Our findings bring new insights into the potency of government-driven securitisation, particularly in terms of identifying groups within societies that are less inclined to follow their government’s view of China.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Five Eyes; China; public opinion; security community; Anglosphere |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jun 2024 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 22 Jul 2024 15:14 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/10357718.2024.2366297 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:213195 |