A recent Cambridge study found that this hostility toward China has been on the rise in recent years not just in Australia but throughout the "liberal democracies" of the US-centralized power alliance. But what's interesting is that public opinion is exactly reversed in the much larger remainder of the Earth's population, with people outside the US power cluster just as fond of China as those within that power cluster are hostile toward it. This relationship is largely mirrored with Russia as well.

"Among the 1.2bn people who inhabit the world’s liberal democracies, three-quarters (75%) now hold a negative view of China, and 87% a negative view of Russia," the report reads. "However, for the 6.3bn people who live in the rest of the world, the picture is reversed. In these societies, 70% feel positively towards China, and 66% positively towards Russia."

Reading by Tim Foley.