No China impact.

Republicans across the political spectrum, from moderate Senator Mitt Romney to fire-breathing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have decreed that China poses an existential threat to the United States. While President Joe Biden hasn’t gone that far yet, his national-security team has maintained the previous administration’s hardline policies toward Beijing. Any other stance would risk a political backlash: The latest Gallup poll shows nearly 80% of Americans hold unfavorable views of China — a number that will only rise if U.S. intelligence agencies conclude that the new coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab.

Biden should think carefully before he commits himself further. Countries facing an existential threat must mobilize and deploy all their resources to confront, if not remove, that threat and ensure their survival. How the Biden administration assesses the threat China poses will effectively determine war and peace in the 21st century.

The fact is, those throwing around the charge most liberally don’t seem to have thought through what it would really mean for China to threaten the existence of the world’s most powerful nation. In reality, China has neither the destructive capability nor the geopolitical motivation to destroy the U.S.

Most obviously, unlike the former Soviet Union, China does not possess a nuclear arsenal large and powerful enough to obliterate the U.S. And, while its conventional power has grown to the point where it could inflict serious losses on U.S. forces in a conflict over Taiwan, China’s military significantly lags the U.S. in technological sophistication and warfighting experience.

In any wider clash, the U.S. would also be able to count on the support of its allies and China’s regional rivals, including Japan and India, which themselves have potent militaries. China will be alone and face enemies on many sides.

As for motivation, China is deeply resentful of the American security presence in Asia. Its leaders see the U.S. as the principal obstacle to their country’s global ambitions. But there is no evidence that they are bent on regime change in the U.S. or seek its physical destruction.

China has no real ideological appeal outside its borders, despite assiduously promoting its “ China Model” of rapid economic development under one-party rule; most other countries know that China’s economic success would be hard to replicate. During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet communism inspired revolutions around the world. Today, the few countries that pay lip service to the China Model do so to win economic favors from Beijing. The real ideological threat to the U.S. — the political authoritarianism embodied by former President Donald Trump and his followers — lies within its own borders.

What about the prospect of China becoming the world’s largest economy in dollar terms? Measured in real terms (or purchasing power parity), the Chinese economy surpassed America’s in 2014 without eroding U.S. leadership in global finance and technology, or undermining U.S. prosperity.

Judging the Chinese threat by the size of China’s economy (the amount of goods and services it produces) is also misleading because its population is more than four times larger than that of the U.S. Aggregate wealth and technological capabilities are far more meaningful yardsticks of power.

Compared with China, the U.S. remains a solid leader in both. U.S. households held $130 trillion in wealth at the end of 2020, while Credit Suisse estimates that Chinese household wealth in mid-2020 stood at $82 trillion.

Technologically, while China has made impressive strides in recent years, the U.S. continues to lead in key areas. The recent tech trade war between the two countries exposed just how vulnerable China — not the U.S. — is. U.S. sanctions have crippled [annihilated] China’s telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. and cast a shadow over the entire Chinese tech sector. Even China’s impressive recent Mars landing depended on technology comparable to what NASA was using in 2003.

None of this even takes into account China’s manifold internal weaknesses, which range from rapid demographic deterioration to social unrest, ethnic tensions and an inefficient state-capitalist system. All will limit the growth of Chinese power.