Just a couple of quick points:
The only nations surveyed where the U.S. was viewed more favorably than China were Poland (62 versus 36 percent) and India (71 versus 56). Canada ranked the U.S. and China even, but China's unfavorable rating was lower by 10 percent.
Leaving Poland aside, the favorability gap between the U.S. and China was generally around 10 percent throughout the rest of the European nations. Interestingly, France's view of the U.S. is improved since March 2004 (37%), and well above where it was in March 2003 (31%):
Most people in Western Europe who hold unfavorable views of the U.S. make George Bush responsible for their position, not a general problem with America. And in what I would consider a very dangerous sign, Americans view themselves as not nearly religious enough, while Europe generally would significantly disagree. Muslim nations, however, would appear to side with Americans on this question:
As with all these Pew Research surveys, there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from the report and the data (far from all of it about the U.S.), and I'd recommend that the community spend a little time trying to digest everything that's in here.
What's really notable, though, is that if one looks at the dataset, the French actually perceive America as "too religious" to a lesser degree than they did in 2003. While we're not talking about a huge shift, the figure in 2003 was 65% viewing the U.S. as too religious (compared with "only" 61% in 2005). Again, this may have been influenced by their own experience with the recent student prohibitions.
