At a time of toxic political partisanship in America, one thing Republicans and Democrats agree on is that China is an existential threat. China “poses the greatest national security threat to the United States”, according to a joint statement from Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Mark Warner. They assert that “our democratic values are threatened by China’s attempts to supplant American leadership and remake the international community in their image”. It’s not the first time Washington has levelled this kind of accusation. Early in the Cold War, even though the Soviet Union had honoured most of its agreements with the US, the notion of the “Soviet threat” prevailed. Hawks within the Truman administration – including a faction known as the Wise Men – alleged with little evidence that Stalin was bent on global hegemony through military means and that Soviet expansionism could only be contained by force. The proposed solution, naturally, was for America to pursue what it was accusing the Soviet Union of plotting: militarisation and global hegemony. And so it did. In his book The American Century and Beyond: US Foreign Relations, 1893-2014, American historian George Herring writes that the Wise Men “were generally pragmatic and realistic rather than ideological in resisting the Soviet Union. But they frequently exaggerated the Soviet threat to sell their programmes. Sometimes, they were persuaded by their own rhetoric or became its political captives.” It’s not difficult to see the parallels to today. If you substitute China for the Soviet Union, you get the script most American officials follow now. There are two problems with that script. First, as during the Cold War, it leaves little room for cooperation, and where diplomacy is pre-empted, conflict is likely to follow. The second problem is that China is not the Soviet Union. Its economy is more dynamic and its ideology more flexible. US needs to understand that China is not like the Soviet Union Also, China doesn’t inspire other nations to remake themselves in its image (as the USSR did), boasts few allies, and has only one military base abroad (in Djibouti ). In no universe does that constitute an existential threat to America’s A-team of allies and several hundred military bases abroad. That hasn’t stopped some from claiming otherwise. When Admiral Philip Davidson, former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, testified before the Senate in March, he claimed America’s military base in Guam was a target. He also warned that Beijing could launch military action against Taiwan within six years and supplant the US as a world leader by 2050. Davidson was, coincidentally, advocating more money for the Pacific Command. His comments sparked a media frenzy, and a number of China experts subsequently cautioned against hyping the risk of war. Why Taiwan won’t be the next Afghanistan, despite what US pundits might say “The thing is, in the military you maximise trying to get the most by saying, ‘China is a big threat’,” Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress who worked in the Pentagon under the Reagan administration, told NPR. “Same thing happened with the Soviet Union.” Countering China isn’t just driving foreign policy; it’s animating domestic policy too. That China is “eating our lunch” is one of President Joe Biden ’s favourite lines when plugging his infrastructure plan, which the Associated Press has termed “a national security pitch for a domestic spending programme”. Also, the US Innovation and Competition Act promises to inject some US$250 billion into scientific research and development. If made law, it would be an example of America investing in its own capabilities – a stark contrast to the Trump administration’s attempts to cripple Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. But there is a dark side to this anti-China approach. Margaret Lewis, a law professor at Seton Hall University, argues that the Justice Department’s China Initiative – which sought to crack down on industrial espionage benefiting China – has resulted in the criminalisation of “China-ness”, meaning any connection to China: national, ethnic, or otherwise. How Covid-19 scientists offer a formula for better US-China relations That could actually hurt the US, as American technology depends on foreign-born researchers. Furthermore, there has been a surge in reports of anti-Asian violence across the country. The organisation Stop AAPI Hate has logged 9,081 incidents since March 2020, ranging from verbal abuse to physical assault. While part of that is racist blowback to the pandemic, scholars and policymakers contend that Washington’s Sinophobic rhetoric and policies have fuelled this rise in anti-Asian hatred. China does pose a serious challenge. Beijing seeks greater influence over both regional and global affairs and is attempting to shape international norms from human rights to maritime law to its benefit. Under President Xi Jinping, there has been an aggressive turn in diplomacy as well as a military build-up which undercuts America’s strategic advantage in the Pacific. And the Communist Party is not shy about leveraging its economic position to silence critics, including in the US. But China does not seek world domination. It seeks regional hegemony and a say in world affairs corresponding to its size, wealth and power. This is a shared belief among some of the top American authorities on China, from Orville Schell and the late Ezra Vogel to Henry Kissinger. How a baby elephant sheds light on China’s quest for soft power Multipolarity is the norm, not the exception, in international affairs, and Kissinger cautions that it’s vital to accept the return of this reality and avoid unnecessary hostility. The “China threat” framework does the exact opposite, and it’s time to change tactics. Reframing the US’ competition with China in a less reactionary, less racist and less zero-sum way would not only stall the deterioration in relations and the demonisation of Asians. It would also allow Americans to better judge and navigate the challenges – and opportunities – presented by China’s rise and (hopefully) avoid the mistakes of the past. Joshua Cartwright is a journalist who is currently pursuing an MA in International Economics and China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs and serves as multimedia editor for Young China Watchers