China

In the past decade, Australian attitudes towards China have undergone a dramatic shift. Beginning in 2019, Australians’ trust in China began to drop significantly, while threat perceptions rose sharply. This occurred as Canberra took more forthright positions on China’s alleged political interference in Australia, human rights abuses, regional military buildup, and on the origins of the Covid pandemic. China responded by freezing high-level contact and by blocking some $20 billion worth of Australian exports.

The 2022 election of the Albanese Labor government in Australia provided an opportunity for both sides to reframe their engagement. China reopened high-level contact, progressively rolled back its trade blockages, and released Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who had been detained in China, while Canberra talked of ‘stabilising’ the relationship.

However, in late February 2025, shortly before fieldwork for this Poll commenced, a Chinese navy task force conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, close enough to commercial aircraft traffic routes to prompt planes to divert from the area. The task force then proceeded to circumnavigate continental Australia, completing its circuit as this Poll went to field in early March.

Public perceptions of China have improved incrementally from a nadir in 2022, but overall, Australians remain wary of their major trading partner — trust, warmth, and confidence in China and its leader are historically low, while threat perceptions remain high.

China: economic partner or security threat

This year, Australians are almost evenly split on whether China is more an economic partner (50%) or a security threat (47%). This represents a rise of six points among those who see China as more of an economic partner, and a fall of six points among those who see it as more of a security threat.

Public sentiment on this question appears to roughly shadow the course of official Australia–China relations: after 2020, majority economic optimism gave way to more pronounced threat perceptions as diplomatic relations soured. Then, from 2023 onwards, as the official relationship thawed, threat perceptions mellowed slightly and public attitudes on this question became more evenly divided.

China as a military threat

When looking to the future, a strong majority of Australians (69%) continue to think it ‘somewhat likely’ or ‘very likely’ that China will become a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years. This is roughly steady from last year, and stands in marked contrast to 2018, when less than half (45%) perceived China as a future military threat.

China: Australian policy settings

In recent years, the Australian government has sought to deter and balance China’s growing military might in partnership with allies, for example through the Australia–United Kingdom–United States (AUKUS) partnership on nuclear-powered submarines. At the same time, it has continued to engage with China as its top trading partner and a major global power.

How does the Australian public judge this balance? We asked respondents to say whether Australia should be doing more, less, or about the same on a range of key issues in the relationship.

A clear majority of Australians say Australia should be doing more to pressure China to improve human rights (61%), as well as working more with allies to deter China’s use of military force (60%). About half think Australia should be doing more with China to address climate change (49%).

Views on economic engagement with China are far more mixed. On trade, the largest proportion (43%) say Australia should be doing about the same as it is now, while the remainder are roughly split between those who say we should be trading more (30%) or less (26%) with China. On foreign investment, about half of Australians (49%) say we should be attracting less investment from China, while the other half say we should be attracting about the same (28%) or more (22%).