Distrusting Beijing, encountering ‘everyday China’ in the Philippines

For roughly three decades, particularly since tensions over Mischief Reef emerged in the mid-1990s, China has had a public opinion problem in the Philippines. The Social Weather Stations (SWS), an independent social research institution and foremost public opinion polling body in the country, has measured Filipino trust in China since 1994 annually (and from 2012, quarterly). Results show that net trust has been positive in only nine of 74 surveys, falling to a record low of negative 54 (on a scale of 100 to negative 100) in 2024. China remained in negative territory in 2025 and 2026, consistently ranking among the least trusted major powers (alongside the US, Japan, Australia and Russia) among Filipinos.

Similarly, the State of Southeast Asia surveys by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute show pronounced scepticism on the part of Philippine policy elites vis-à-vis China, showing they are consistently among the least willing in the region to align with China if ASEAN were “forced to choose” between Beijing and Washington.

Against this pattern, some recent surveys present a more nuanced picture. Pew Research Center’s 2026 Global Attitudes Survey found that 40% of Filipinos have a favourable view of China, up from 34% in 2024. The generational divide is striking: 47% of Filipinos aged 18–34 years old view China favourably, compared with 27% of those aged 50 years old and above. Among younger Filipinos, 61% express confidence in Chinese leader Xi Jinping to “do the right thing” in world affairs.

These figures sit uneasily beside another set of numbers in the same survey, however. 76% of over a thousand Filipinos named China as their country’s top threat, while 86% are concerned about territorial disputes with China. A national poll in July 2026 likewise found that 64% believe the Philippines should distrust China; 14% said it should extend trust.

Different versions of China

These results capture different dimensions of Filipino attitudes towards China, which raises a more interesting question: what different “Chinas” are Filipinos responding to?

A recent South China Morning Post article on “Chinamaxxing” offers a possible clue. It claims that among some Western Gen Z social media users (born 1997 to 2012), China has become fashionable through everyday practices and symbols. It would be premature to claim that the same trend has taken root in the Philippines, but this emerging global phenomenon draws attention to a broader change in how Filipinos encounter China.

While the West Philippine Sea (editor’s note: This is how the Philippines refers to what it deems its waters in part of the South China Sea) remains one of the most powerful frames through which Filipinos understand China, it is increasingly not the only one. Alongside the China of its territorial disputes, diplomatic protests and coastguard confrontations with the Philippines is “everyday China”, the China one encounters through its food and consumer goods, technology, entertainment and representations of ordinary life.

This does not mean to suggest a neat separation between the state of the People’s Republic of China and “Chinese culture”. The two are distinguishable, but hardly separable. On the one hand, the Chinese state actively promotes particular representations of Chinese civilisation, modernity and technological achievement. On the other, much of everyday China is encountered through commercial actors, platforms and social media users, rather than through the Chinese government’s explicitly official messaging.

What may be changing, then, is not simply the Filipino opinion of one object called China, but the number of registers through which China becomes visible.

Chinese influence

One factor is China’s changing soft power environment. Traditional public diplomacy relied heavily on state media, cultural programmes and elite exchanges. Today, impressions of China can also travel through tourism, consumer goods and technologies, and digital media such as apps, dramas and lifestyle content. Everyday China’s influence may be less in persuading Filipinos to accept Beijing’s geopolitical positions than in broadening the range of associations through which they understand China.

This does not mean Beijing manufactures every possible favourable image of China. Treating all cultural attraction as propaganda would obscure the genuine appeal of contemporary Chinese society and consumer culture, but this informational environment is not politically neutral. Clearly, Chinese state institutions have adapted to the social media ecosystem, while investigations have documented covert efforts to cultivate pro-China narratives and weaken support for the Philippine-US alliance.

Domestic politics is the other part of the story: China has become embedded in the widening Marcos-Duterte divide. During his presidency, former President Rodrigo Duterte normalised a language of accommodation towards Beijing and scepticism towards Washington. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has moved in the opposite direction, strengthening security ties with the US and foregrounding Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea.

Views towards China can acquire domestic political meaning. More accommodating positions towards Beijing are particularly visible among Duterte-aligned political figures, where they may overlap with criticisms towards Marcos Jr., anxiety over war, or reservations about closer dependence on the US. These associations are unlikely to be uniform, however; favourable attitudes towards China should not be treated as proxies for partisan affiliation.

This is why rising favourability should not be read automatically as evidence that the West Philippine Sea has ceased to matter or that Chinese soft power has won over Filipino hearts and minds.

Social media provides the infrastructure through which these different images coexist. In the same feed, a Filipino user can encounter footage of Chinese vessels confronting Philippine ships, a travel video praising Shanghai’s transport system, a Chinese drama clip and a smartphone review. A recent example is the Chinese vertical drama The Heiress Who Won with Brains, whose clips went viral among Filipino social media users, generating a strong local following for lead actress Zhang Yingfei.

Yet such encounters need not produce a coherent “pro-China” position. Admiration for Chinese cultural products can coexist with distrust of Beijing’s actions. This is why rising favourability should not be read automatically as evidence that the West Philippine Sea has ceased to matter or that Chinese soft power has won over Filipino hearts and minds. The surveys show the opposite.

Policy implications

Thus, the emerging positive trend should be read more cautiously: the West Philippine Sea remains central to how Filipinos perceive China, but it does not exhaust the ways China enters Filipino political and everyday life. The more important question may be less whether Filipinos are becoming “pro-China” than how they differentiate between various images of China.

For the current Philippine government, this differentiation matters. In an intensely digitally mediated and polarising political environment, a key form of influence is shaping which aspect of China makes the most sense to Filipinos.

This article was first published in Fulcrum, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s blogsite.

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