Last year’s PAX sapiens survey documented a year-on-year shift in American public opinion about China, from sharper hostility to measured skepticism and conditional pragmatism. The 2026 findings extend that pattern amid continued bilateral volatility.
American opinion keeps favoring a bounded form of engagement. They are open to cooperation where it produces concrete and reciprocal benefits, while placing clear limits on economic exposure, security risks, and military escalation. These overlapping but conditional preferences create political space for managing the U.S.-China relationship.
The Trump-Xi summit in mid-May this year provides the report’s immediate policy context. While the survey did not explicitly ask Americans to endorse or reject “a constructive relationship of strategic stability” as a diplomatic formulation, it examines whether the concrete policies that might be pursued under such a framework fit the preferences observed in American public opinion. Drawing on a national survey fielded by NORC at the University of Chicago from May 14 to 18, 2026, of 1,047 adults, this report identifies four overlapping patterns of opinion on key aspects of the U.S.-China relationship that receive majority or plurality support, although only about one in four Americans combines all four into a coherent policy outlook.
