Ahoy, Swede here. There are probably several factors, e.g. Volvo being acquired by a Chinese conglomerate comes to mind. A significant factor I can think of is China's imprisonment of the author Gui Minhai.

He spent a significant time in Sweden, studying, building his life, even having a family, but eventually moved back to China. He'd written a book about "Xi Jinping and his six mistresses", and was vanished away, alongside a few of the employees at the publisher, while he was on vacation in Thailand.

His imprisonment hasn't been taken lightly, with even our previous prime minister having urged his liberation.

I've definitely perceived a lot of anti-China sentiment here. The anti-America sentiment is fairly recent I feel, and not as widespread.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 hours ago

As a swede expat (left in the nineties), the US turnaround is wild. We had people doing the stupid american christmas lighting, football clubs were named in english in a very american way, highest harley davidson per capita in the world, and on and on and on. USA USA USA! We've been a secret ally since the fifties, pouring sigint to the usa, even our runways could accept the B52s.

Sweden is small and quite bipolar (changes come fast and often overshoot, which triggers other quick changes and so on) but the damage the US administration has done in just a year or two is going down in history IMO. Like WW2, the cold war, USA rupture (& re-fall of RU) will be the final chapters of modern history.

I don't even know if I'm overstating or understating the impact.