Perceptions of one country by the residents of another are harder to measure than they may seem. The report’s analysis of open surveys and soft power rankings identifies four systemic problems in this field: statistics outweigh analytical conclusions; perception models are only weakly localized to a specific country; little attention is paid to social differences within society; and data interpretation depends heavily on the researcher’s initial position. A particular challenge for Kazakhstan is the limited number of studies on this very topic.
The response to these limitations is monitoring — repeated measurements using a single methodology. TALAP has been measuring perceptions of China since 2020 (the 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024 waves), which makes it possible to look not at a one-time snapshot, but at dynamics — long time series that show the direction and pace of change.
The calculations are based on a three-tier structure. At the first level, 27 basic variables are measured; at the second, they are consolidated into 4 indicators; at the third, an integral index is calculated.