Based on a multi-country general equilibrium model of trade and FDI, this paper estimates the effects of host country image on bilateral FDI and welfare. We use a unique dataset from the BBC World Service Poll, which surveys the populations of many countries on their views of whether an evaluated country is having a mainly positive or negative influence in the world, to construct country image proxy variables. We estimate the effects of country image perceptions on the investor profits expectation parameter, and we apply it in two important counterfactual analysis:the Bush effects and the China rising effects. First, the results of the econometric model find that a good country image promotes FDI. 1% increase in the country image (positive response ratio) is associated with an increase of 1.955% in logarithmic FDI stocks. Second, several robustness test, IV estimations and dynamic panel estimations all have proved this promoting effects. Third, counterfactual analysis indicate that the drop of country image during 2007-2011 incurs the U.S. 0.052%-0.064% loss of total welfare, which cost the country 1.924%-2.339% of its total gains from openness. In contrast, the consistent improvement of China’s country image between 2009 and 2012 has amounted to more than 0.878%-1.174% of its total welfare gains from openness.