Americans are increasingly concerned about China's power abroad and want to combat that influence, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

Some 42% of respondents indicated that they consider China an enemy of the United States — up from 34% in 2021 when the Washington-based research organization began asking the question.

The study, published Wednesday, also found 71% of Americans believe China's global influence has been growing in recent years.

Nearly half of respondents said limiting China's power should be a top priority for U.S. foreign policy, along with protecting the U.S. from terrorist attacks and curbing the flow of illegal drugs into the country.

The rising suspicion comes as the two countries clash on a growing number of issues and the major candidates in the U.S. presidential election vow to stand tough on China.

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Both President Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump have expressed concerns about the impact of low-cost Chinese goods on American industries. About two-thirds of respondents in the Pew survey believe that China has a negative impact on U.S. economic conditions.

Biden recently called for the tripling of tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum to target what he called "unfair trade practices" by China. And on a trip to Beijing last month, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen raised the issue of "overcapacity" in Chinese manufacturing of electric cars and other clean-energy goods.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in Beijing to discuss long-simmering sources of tension. Blinken raised the need to stem the supply of fentanyl from China to the U.S. and warned China to stop providing tools and technology to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

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"Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China's support," Blinken said in a news conference Friday. "I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will."

Meanwhile, China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, criticized the U.S. for using trade policy and sanctions to contain China's economic development. Wang also reiterated his government's concerns about U.S. interference in China's claim on Taiwan and called on Biden to respect Beijing's sovereignty over the island democracy.

The high-level meetings followed the passage of a U.S. bill that allocated $8 billion in funding for Taiwan. The bill, which Biden signed last week, would also force a ban of TikTok in the U.S. if the Chinese-owned company does not sell its short-video app business.

To assess American attitudes toward China, Pew researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,600 U.S. adults by mail, text and email during the first week of April.

The survey found that 81% of U.S. adults view China unfavorably, a slight decline from 83% last year but still near the highest level in data going back to 2005. Public opinion has changed radically since 2017, when about 47% of respondents held unfavorable views of China and 43% held favorable ones.

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Social media companies have too much political power, 78% of Americans say in Pew survey

Finally, something that both sides of the aisle can agree on: social media companies are too powerful.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 78% of American adults say social media companies have too much influence on politics -- to break it down by party, that's 84% of surveyed Republicans and 74% of Democrats. Overall, this viewpoint has become 6% more popular since the last presidential election year.

Americans' feelings about social media reflect that of their legislators. Some of the only political pursuits that have recently garnered significant bipartisan support have been efforts to hold social media platforms accountable. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have been working across the aisle on their Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that would put a duty of care on social media platforms to keep children safe. However, some privacy advocates have criticized the bill's potential to make adults more vulnerable to government surveillance.

Meanwhile, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have also forged an unlikely partnership to propose a bill that would create a commission to oversee big tech platforms.

"The only thing worse than me doing a bill with Elizabeth Warren is her doing a bill with me," Graham said at a Senate hearing in January.

It's obvious why Americans think tech companies have too much political power -- since the 2020 survey, social platforms were used to coordinate an attack on the Capitol, and then as a result, a sitting president got banned from those platforms for egging on those attacks. Meanwhile, the government is so concerned about the influence of Chinese-owned TikTok that President Biden just signed a bill that could ban the app for good.

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But the views of conservative and liberal Americans diverge on the topic of tech companies' bias. While 71% of Republicans surveyed said that big tech favors liberal perspectives over conservative ones, 50% of Democrats said that tech companies support each set of views equally. Only 15% of adults overall said that tech companies support conservatives over liberals.

These survey results make sense given the rise of explicitly conservative social platforms, like Rumble, Parler and Trump's own Truth Social app.

During Biden's presidency, government agencies like the FTC and DOJ have taken a sharper aim at tech companies. Some of the country's biggest companies like Amazon, Apple and Meta have faced major lawsuits alleging monopolistic behaviors. But according to Pew's survey, only 16% of U.S. adults think that tech companies should be regulated less than they are now. This percentage has grown since 2021, when Pew found that value to be 9%.

Liberals and conservatives may not agree on everything when it comes to tech policy, but the predominant perspective from this survey is clear: Americans are tired of the outsized influence of big tech.

Most Americans see TikTok as a Chinese influence tool, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

 A majority of Americans believe that China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as Washington moves closer to potentially banning the Chinese-owned short-video app.

Some 58% of respondents to the two-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, agreed with a statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, to "influence American public opinion." Some 13% disagreed, and the rest were unsure or didn't answer the question. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to see China as using the app to affect U.S. opinions.

TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts and would not share data on its 170 million U.S. users with the Chinese government. The company told Congress last year that it does "not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government."

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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President Joe Biden last week signed legislation giving ByteDance 270 days to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban.

TikTok has vowed to challenge the ban as a violation of the protections of free expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and TikTok users are expected to again take legal action. A U.S. judge in Montana in November blocked a state ban on TikTok, citing free-speech concerns.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 50% of Americans supported banning TikTok, while 32% opposed a ban and the rest were unsure. The poll only surveyed U.S. adults and doesn't reflect the views of people under age 18, who make up a significant portion of TikTok's users in the United States. About six in 10 poll respondents aged 40 and older supported a ban, compared with about four in 10 aged 18-39.

The poll showed 46% of Americans agreed with a statement that China is using the app to "spy on everyday Americas," an allegation Beijing has denied.

The app is ubiquitous in America. Even Biden's re-election campaign is using it as a tool to win over voters ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Biden's rival, Republican Donald Trump, who has criticized a potential ban and is the majority owner of the company that operates his social media app Truth Social, has not joined.

A majority of Americans, 60%, said it was inappropriate for U.S. political candidates to use TikTok to promote their campaigns.

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Biden's signing of the law sets a Jan. 19 deadline for a sale - one day before his term is set to expire - but he could extend the deadline by three months if he determines that ByteDance is making progress on divesting the app.

The poll, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 1,022 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.