Americans are turning away from Europe toward Asia, according to a survey released on Wednesday showing, for the first time, most US citizens thought China and Japan were more important to their national interest.

周三发布的一项调查显示，美国人的关注点正在从欧洲转向亚洲，多数美国公民认为中国和日本对他们的国家利益更重要，这还是有史以来首次。

The Transatlantic Trends survey found 51 percent of Americans felt Asian countries were more important to them than European Union nations, while only 38 percent thought the opposite.

The new American focus was prompted by both interest in new business opportunities from Asia's booming economies and fear of growing competition from the Far East, said analysts¹.

"What do people see on TV? ... Booming China, booming India, imploding²（爆聚的） Europe. It's natural to ask: Who do we want to align³ ourselves with?," said Bruce Stokes, a senior fellow from think tank the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GM) that published the survey.

The findings were reversed the last time the survey asked a similar question.

In 2004, 54 percent of Americans said Europe was more important to their country's "vital" interests, while only 29 percent said Asia was.

"We may have arrived at a watershed⁴（流域，分水岭） moment when the United States looks ... to the Far East as its first instinct," said GM president Craig Kennedy in a statement.

The survey, carried out in May and June, asked US and European citizens their opinions on international affairs, the economy and other issues.

While 63 percent of Americans saw China as a threat and just 31 percent as an opportunity, majorities in several European countries, including Germany and Britain, said China was an opportunity.

Obama's foreign policies proved more popular in Europe, where he scored a 75 percent approval rating, than in the United States, where he scored 54 percent.

For the first time in the survey, a majority of Americans, or 56 percent, were pessimistic（悲观的） about the prospects⁵ of stabilizing⁶ the situation in Afghanistan, while European pessimism⁷ remained high at 66 percent.