Economists and savvy journalists are coming to see that China’s debt-backed, investment-intensive state capitalism is doomed. See, as an example , When does a Chinese growth deceleration become a crisis?
This was inevitable: the imbalance between domestic consumption and unproductive, debt-fueled investment cannot continue eternally.
Popular perception is behind, however, and so when Pew polls ordinary people from around the world, most of them still think that China’s a juggernaut, and that there’s a Chinese century ahead.
A poll in 1989 might have said the same about Japan as the next great world power, but no one says that now.
A poll like Pew’s simply lags reality.