The 2026 annual State of Southeast Asia Survey, released this week by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, has revealed a striking shift in regional sentiment: a slim majority of Southeast Asian respondents now favor China over the United States in a hypothetical choice between the two leading global economic powers, reversing the narrow lead the US held in 2025’s edition of the poll.
Conducted between January 5 and February 20 of this year among 2,008 respondents across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the survey found 52% of participants picked China when asked to choose between the two powers, compared to 48% who selected the US. Stronger support for China was recorded in six ASEAN member states: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Timor-Leste, Thailand and Brunei.
Beyond the head-to-head preference, the gap in perceived economic influence is far wider. Nearly 56% of ASEAN respondents identified China as the most influential economic power in the Southeast Asian region, a figure that dwarfs the 15.3% who named the US as the leading regional economic force. China also retains its position as the most widely recognized political and strategic power in the region, followed by the US and ASEAN itself.
The survey highlights deep growing unease among Southeast Asian observers about the direction of US leadership under the second Trump administration. More than half of respondents — 51.9% — ranked current US leadership as their top geopolitical concern. Analysts note that shifting policy from Washington has eroded regional confidence in US reliability, with tangible economic and geopolitical fallout hitting Southeast Asian economies.
“This year’s survey suggests that the foundations of US influence in Southeast Asia are gradually narrowing,” explained Joanne Lin, senior fellow and coordinator of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s ASEAN Studies Centre and one of the lead authors of the survey. While the result does not signal a total rejection of the US by Southeast Asian nations, it does reflect a growing cautious reevaluation of Washington’s role in the region, Lin noted in commentary published on the institute’s analysis platform Fulcrum.
Scot Marciel, a former US diplomat and senior adviser at consultancy BowerGroupAsia, told a launch webinar for the report that the rising concern stems from dramatic shifts in US foreign policy that have left regional partners uncertain about Washington’s long-term commitments. Examples of US policy actions, including the imposition of sweeping high tariffs and open flouting of established international norms such as interventions in Venezuela earlier this year, have injected widespread uncertainty and triggered direct economic turbulence across Southeast Asian markets, Marciel said.
Notably, Marciel added that the survey concluded before the joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, a development that has already created new economic shockwaves for the region and deepened questions about US global leadership. “The US started the Iran conflict along with Israel, which obviously is having a major impact economically on Southeast Asia, and also raising concerns about what kind of role the US is playing in the region and in the world,” Marciel added.
In contrast to the skepticism facing US policy, the survey finds growing optimism about deeper ties with China. More than 55% of respondents expect their country’s bilateral relations with China to improve or improve significantly over the next three years. That figure stands in sharp contrast to the just 32.8% of respondents who forecast an improvement in ASEAN-US relations under the current Trump administration.
Wang Huiyao, founder and president of Beijing-based independent think tank the Center for China and Globalization, attributes the positive sentiment toward China to decades of consistent economic cooperation that has delivered broad-based prosperity across the region. “China has contributed significantly to prosperity in Southeast Asia and Asia generally, and has become the biggest trading partner for all ASEAN countries. And that boom is still continuing,” Wang said, adding that there remains significant room for both China and ASEAN to deepen collaboration across sectors.
The survey also identified key sources of negative sentiment toward the US: 43.4% of respondents cited the US’s regular use of sanctions, tariffs, and coercive trade measures against other nations as a top concern that erodes positive views of Washington. This shift marks a notable move toward geoeconomic anxiety becoming the primary source of regional unease about US engagement in Southeast Asia.
Alongside tracking perceptions of US-China competition, the 2026 survey captured a broad range of other top regional priorities for respondents, including climate change, transnational global scam operations, disputes in the South China Sea, the ongoing political crisis in Myanmar, the Thailand-Cambodia border standoff, and the long-term institutional development of ASEAN itself.