Two-thirds of more than 13,200 survey respondents in 11 countries including China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United States agreed that their governments should prioritise saving lives over restarting economies.
“It’s complicated because you have two crises simultaneously – a health crisis and an economic crisis,” said Richard Edelman, chief executive of U.S. communications firm Edelman, which did the survey.
“But people are saying, ‘We’ve already had six to seven weeks of this (restriction on activity), what’s another week or two?'”
No choice but to continue working
On a different matter, an internal Chinese report presented early last month concluded that global anti-China sentiment was at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and could result in confrontation with the United States, people familiar with the paper told Reuters.
China has been accused by the United States of suppressing early information on the virus, which was first detected in the central city of Wuhan, and downplaying its risks.
Beijing has repeatedly denied that it covered up the extent or severity of the virus outbreak.
Relations between China and the United States are widely seen to be at their worst in decades, with deepening mistrust and points of friction, from U.S. accusations of unfair trade and technology practices, to disputes over Hong Kong, Taiwan and contested territories in the South China Sea.
