| Summary/Abstract |
China in recent years has been asked by other major powers to take a greater share in international responsibility in response to the rise in China's national capability. Negative perceptions about how China is dodging its international responsibility exist not only among policy makers around the world, but have spread to worldwide mass publics, especially across the American people. In this article, we apply the dataset from the ‘Americans’ Attitudes toward China Survey' (AACS) to investigate what the American public think of China's international responsibility and which factors explain the varying evaluations from different theoretical perspectives. The results indicate that Americans' negative evaluations of China's international responsibility are associated with poor ratings regarding China's fulfillment of its domestic obligations and apprehension regarding China's potential threat, but has little to do with China's international behavior. To reduce these negative evaluations, China needs to improve its human rights conditions, give people more political rights, and convince the American public of the benevolence of its ascending power. In addition, persistent efforts toward soft-power construction are also very important since Americans who are interested in Chinese culture or knowledge tend not to think that China is dodging its international responsibility.
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