Are Western media turning China-friendly?
Something remarkable is happening: bit by bit, Western media seem to be dropping their infamous “China bad” editorial biases.
This isn’t just based on feeling, we have empirical data behind this. A Chinese analyst recently did a study comparing coverage of China in major Western news outlets between 2019 and 2025: back in 2019, nearly 70% of stories covering China’s economy, technology, or environment had a negative tone, but by 2025, the share of negative stories had dropped to around 40%, with significant increases in neutral and positive coverage.
Even The Economist, the poster child of “China bad” coverage who hilariously have predicted China’s collapse almost every year for the past 3 decades, entitled their latest issue “Why China is winning the trade war,” explaining in the corresponding article that China was “on top” and changing the world. Quite the incredible reversal of narrative to anyone familiar with their editorial line.
Same with the BBC, an outlet that was infamous for using a grey “gloom filter” on images it aired of China to make it look more dystopian.
Recently the same BBC posted on their Chinese-language X account a video showcasing Xinjiang’s winter scenery, describing it as “magnificent” and “like a silver-white world” - quite the contrast to previous negative framing of the region. Other example, they recently released a seven-minute video titled “DeepSeek, TikTok, Temu: How China is Taking the Lead in Tech,” praising China’s rapid tech development.
Why is this happening? Is this a temporary anomaly or are we witnessing a longer-term trend? I’ll argue that what’s driving this shift is simple: the structural logic of multipolarity. And it’s not going away.
