Educating the United States on the 'China threat'

Abstract

This article studies representations of China as a threat in the United States with a particular focus on the years of the Trump presidency, and on actors networked in and around the administration. The research questions are: how is the ‘China threat’ image constructed through representations, and with what intentions? The article contributes to IR studies on state-based threats in general, and studies on the current US-China relations in particular. The empirical analysis shows that in representing China, the actors intentionally or unintentionally tapped onto multiple IR theories and in the process, they created a compelling blueprint for threat images. The intention of the actors was then to ‘educate’ the US with this ‘China threat’ image. This intent to educate had the objective of invoking threat perception, and thus receive public and political support for the strategies and policies the actors proposed to counter the threat. This observation leads to a proposition that threat representations have the potential to influence threat perceptions/misperceptions. Therefore, a cultural studies perspective of represented ‘China threat’ images – as adopted in this article – can complement political psychology studies of ‘China threat’ images held by individual and collective elites.