The US makes China’s rise seem like a threat based on otherizing logic.
Chang 20 [Jun Yang Chang is an Assistant Professor. Head of Military Studies Programme. Education. BSSc Hons (NUS); MSc (RSIS, NTU); PhD (University of Queensland), “The United States and the Macrosecuritisation of the “China Threat”,” The University of Queensland, 2020, https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_0e059e5/s4446624_final_thesis.pdf?dsi_version=348e264082624c5acd34a6d7776086f3&Expires=1690594045&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=Zd-lsBMr1Mt38Ul9kf8Tdy9utKJVh0o9jHgkN3NVqbEIg~UyzC4F1dUTaEyGsnddpcIWmsMJwSta0RHZSAKvGThdmalxxzo8g~mjl-qOGWkrV6TEvb5pSNT8QGRxVKGXyxwlVkv-BtfDzbnmH4KfuY3eVorIFQFnXABs-p64CozxLH7WIrfC3~aaSpjQcyai-mKnsC1PGcrIxQzOzy3NLTVVMM1f88iHC2ZG6YJaCfeo97mTWSJEqj4bv0tWzmZwsRvl3RrrYIxV5Qn0F8UR3LLPdJwH5XNTPD6dNw7C9oSXOFP6Ai7Jqzn35xdsxP63VlaBbb6zLKLRALtv5w89Aw__, accessed 7-28-2023, HKR-SWY]
Moreover, the US has not placed other states different from it, such as Vietnam, into an “othered” tier like China. Neither has it done so to other rising powers, like India. Thus, even when Thucydides highlights: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”, it was perhaps also because it was Athens and not just its rise that made Sparta fearful. Allison notes this as well, observing that unlike the US taking over Britain, it is different to be “surpassed by an adversary whose values are so strikingly different”.123 The logical conclusion is that the US security portrayals of China’s rise as a risk are not due to China itself nor its assertive practices. Rather, the US is concerned with China’s rise. Unlike the “Yellow Peril” or the “Red Menace”, the US take on the “Blue Dread” is not a “China Threat” theory, but more appropriately a “China’s Rise Risk Thesis”.