Japan is the most popular country in the world.
According to a new poll, it's Japan, which overtook Germany:
The poll also finds that views of China have improved significantly over the last year, in both the developing and industrialized world, and that the country has now overtaken both the EU and the US. Views of the US overall remained similar to 2011 despite large shifts in some regions.The 2012 Country Ratings Poll, conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA among 24,090 people around the world, asks respondents to rate whether the influence of each of 16 countries and the EU is "mostly positive" or "mostly negative."
While in past years the EU has generally received quite positive ratings, this year positive views of the EU have dropped eight points on average, from 56 to 48 per cent, across the countries polled in 2011 and 2012. Ratings of other European nations dropped as well, with the UK down six points and France down four.
Germany, the most positively regarded nation last year, has seen its positive ratings drop from 60 to 56 per cent. This puts Germany in second place behind Japan, which is now rated most positively--by 58 per cent on average, up two points from last year. Canada (rated positively by 53%) and the UK (by 51%) are the third and fourth most positively viewed countries.
Positive views of China rose from 46 to 50 per cent on average. They jumped particularly sharply in the UK (up 19 points), as well as in Australia, Canada, and Germany (all up 18 points). These gains follow modest rises between 2010 and 2011. On average, views of the US have hardly changed, with 47 per cent expressing positive views and 33 per cent negative, compared to 48 and 31 per cent in 2010.
The most negatively rated countries were, as in previous years, Iran (55% negative), Pakistan (51% negative), and Israel and North Korea (both 50% negative).
Click on the link and you'll get some good graphics showing just how dramatically views of the EU have fallen.
