This Week in Asia
The Philippines, Politics
Ref: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3368528/why-younger-filipinos-are-warming-china-despite-maritime-tensions
"Why younger Filipinos are warming to China despite maritime tensions"
A Pew survey shows 47 per cent of Filipinos aged 18 to 34 view China favourably, with some respondents also expressing confidence in its leadership
Published: 6:15pm, 23 Sep 2026
Inside a car wash lounge in the southern Philippine city of Davao, Shenilane Formento scrolls through messages on her Chinese-made Oppo phone as she waits for a customer to pay.
Formento, 29, has worked as a cashier for about a year. She follows developments in the South China Sea through news reports shared on her social media feeds, including frequent confrontations between Philippine and Chinese forces in the disputed waters.
While she found such incidents “disappointing”, she ultimately thought better of Beijing than Washington, which she blamed for the high energy prices affecting the Philippines and the rest of the world.
“That’s why I prefer China to the United States. Just look at what is happening … because of the US-Iran war – fuel prices are skyrocketing,” she said.
Formento’s views point to a broader contradiction in how Filipinos see China: even as Beijing remains distrusted over its actions in the disputed waters, younger Filipinos are more likely than older generations to view the country favourably.
A new survey released on July 15 by the US-based Pew Research Centre found that 47 per cent of Filipinos aged 18 to 34 viewed China favourably, compared with 44 per cent of those aged 35 to 49 and 27 per cent of those 50 and older.
The survey also found that 61 per cent of Filipinos aged 18 to 34 had confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 32 per cent among those 50 and older.
The findings stand out against a long-running pattern of distrust towards Beijing, according to Social Weather Stations (SWS), a Philippine polling organisation.
SWS has measured Filipinos’ trust in China annually since 1994 and quarterly since 2012. Beijing recorded a positive net trust rating in only nine of 74 surveys, with its rating falling to a record low of minus 54 in 2024 on a scale ranging from plus 100 to minus 100.
China’s net trust rating remained negative in 2025 and 2026, while the US, Japan and Australia recorded higher levels of trust among Filipinos.
Pew’s findings do not establish why younger Filipinos have more favourable views of China, but experts point to how they encounter the country in everyday life, as well as a generational shift in perceptions of its economic and political rise.
“As I see it, younger Filipinos encounter China in many different ways. They see Chinese technology and consumer products, entertainment, travel content, and social media posts about life in China,” said Jan Robert R Go, associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
“This is where I find the idea of ‘everyday China’ useful.
By this, I mean the China that people encounter in their daily lives, often outside formal politics and diplomacy. These experiences may give younger Filipinos a wider range of impressions of China.”
But Go cautioned against interpreting more favourable views of China as evidence that younger Filipinos are turning away from the US.
“I find the 61 per cent figure particularly interesting because it suggests we should be careful about assuming that attitudes towards China all move together,” he said.
“Someone can have confidence in Chinese leadership on the world stage, appreciate Chinese popular culture, and still distrust China on territorial issues.”
Indeed, the Pew survey found that 76 per cent of Filipino respondents overall named China as the country’s top threat, while 86 per cent said they were very or somewhat concerned about territorial disputes involving China and neighbouring countries.
Pew did not provide age-group breakdowns for those questions.
Arnaud Leveau, a geopolitics professor at Paris Dauphine University, said the coexistence of these views was among the most notable findings.
“Strategically, this tells us something about the emerging generation in Asia. The political landscape may become less binary. Younger citizens may be willing to recognise China’s power and even aspects of its leadership while refusing to accept Chinese pressure on their sovereignty,” Leveau said.
Generational memory could also help explain the gap, he said.
Older Filipinos grew up in an environment in which the US occupied a particularly central strategic and cultural position, while China was more distant, poorer and associated with communist rivalry.
Younger Filipinos have instead grown up with an economically powerful and technologically sophisticated China that is deeply integrated into Asian trade and supply chains.
“Their China is the China of smartphones, digital platforms, high-speed rail, electric vehicles, large cities and a major Asian consumer market,” Leveau said.
“For younger Asians, China’s rise is already part of the normal international landscape. They did not experience the transition from a US-dominated regional system in the same way as older generations. Multipolarity is not a disruption for them; it is increasingly the world they have always known.”
Edmund Tayao, a law professor at the San Beda University Graduate School of Law in Manila, urged caution in interpreting the Pew findings without comparable polling from Philippine research organisations, saying he would prefer surveys from two or three of the country’s most respected polling groups.
He also pointed to social media as a potentially important influence on respondents’ views, saying the dominance of online content and what he described as China’s “vigorous campaign” could shape perceptions, particularly when users might struggle to distinguish reliable information from misinformation.
Tayao said some Filipinos might also view China favourably because they were impressed by the speed of its development and hope the Philippines could achieve similar progress.
Such exposure, Go said, did not necessarily mean younger Filipinos were becoming more sympathetic to Beijing on political questions.
“I also wouldn’t assume this makes younger Filipinos apolitical,” he said. “They may simply be responding to China through a wider range of experiences.”
Go noted that it was too early to say whether the age gap represented a lasting generational shift.
“What we do not know yet is whether that difference will remain as younger Filipinos grow older,” he said, adding that developments in the South China Sea, economic conditions, domestic politics and media coverage could all change how Filipinos viewed China.
“So, for now, I would treat the age difference as an important pattern to watch. We need to see whether it appears consistently over several years before calling it a permanent generational change.”
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The Philippines | China-Philippines relations ..
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