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Trust in global powers
About the author
Ryan Neelam
Ryan Neelam was Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program at the Lowy Institute. He led the flagship annual Lowy Institute Poll, was project director for the Global Diplomacy Index, and wrote about climate diplomacy and multilateral policy.
Each year, the Lowy Institute Poll asks about levels of trust in global powers. This year, the vast majority of Australians continue to trust Japan (85%), the United Kingdom (84%) and France (79%) ‘somewhat’ or ‘a great deal’ to act responsibly in the world.
By the same measure, Russia (8%) and China (15%) are once again the least trusted global powers of those surveyed. For China, this is a marginal increase on last year (12%) but remains strikingly low compared to five years ago, when half of Australians (52%) expressed trust in China. Similarly, trust in Russia plummeted following its invasion of Ukraine last year, and currently sits 20 points below 2018 levels.
Trust in the United States (61%) has dropped by four points, compared to 2022, but is still ten points higher than in 2020 (the last year of the Trump administration).
Levels of trust in India (58%) and Indonesia (51%) remain stable on last year, having fluctuated in previous years.
