The IR theories and examples they give of imminent Chinese conflict have existed for years---only recently has an academic consensus emerged indicating that China is a threat

Since around 2017, there has been a sharp increase in the number of news articles that include the words ‘China’ and ‘threat’ in close proximity.

Figure 1

Keywords "China" & "Threat" in proximity

In principle, major IR theories are able to shed some light on why policy elites might see China, or its government, as a threat to global peace and prosperity. Offensive realism maintains that threat perceptions depend on power capabilities; the more power a state accumulates, the more threatening it appears to others (e.g. Mearsheimer ). Balance-of-threat theories incorporate a state’s intentions as an additional factor that shapes threat perceptions (e.g. Walt ). Power transition scholarship assesses the rising state’s level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the international order to assess its potential threat (Tammen et al. ), while other scholarship looks more closely at a state’s regime type, domestic behaviour or international rhetoric to deduce its intentions or level of satisfaction with the global order, and thus its potential threat to that order (e.g. Goddard ; Cooley et al. ). Constructivist research on threats has focused on how images and narratives about China around the world intertwine with domestic politics, political culture or identity formulations, including the (mis-)recognition of state identity and status (e.g. Turner ; Rogelja and Tsimonis ; Gries and Jing ; Pan ; Murray ). From this perspective, states are represented as threatening not just because their behaviour or intentions are objectively threatening, but because identity constructions are stabilised by the existence of a threatening ‘other’.

The above theories form the basis for most commentary on China’s rise and can explain aspects of increased threat perceptions. For instance, observers have highlighted China’s growing gross domestic product (GDP) as an indicator of its overall growth in power, or its military modernisation and militarisation of the South China Sea as examples of its malign intentions (Stokes ; Hutzler ; Wong ). Jonathan E. Hillman, Hal Brands and Jake Sullivan have presented the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank or the Belt and Road Initiative as indicators that China is seeking to establish alternative institutions due to its dissatisfaction with the liberal international order and its role in it (Public Hearing before US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, , Brands and Sullivan ). Fallows () and Wolf () have suggested that the repression of civil society, the increased concentration of power in the hands of Xi Jinping and the Chinese leaders’ assertive foreign policy rhetoric give an impression of what a more powerful China might mean for the world. Other commentary has highlighted the usefulness of a ‘China threat’ in the US domestic context, be it to justify growing military budgets, find a shared enemy or common ground in one of the few areas where bipartisan cooperation is still feasible, or stoke populism for domestic political purposes (Feffer ; Hartung ; Dollar and Hass ; Luo ; Yuan and Fu ).

While many of these factors certainly play a role, it is important to note that China’s domestic repression and international assertiveness existed well before the emergence of the new consensus (Jerdén ). While policy elites tend to defer action when faced with potential but uncertain future threats (Edelstein ), it is surprising that the consensus on China’s malign intentions did not emerge far earlier. Arguably, existing theories might explain a slow build-up in threat perceptions, but less so when and especially how such threat perceptions tip into a broad consensus.

More importantly, existing theories cannot address why China has been cast predominantly as an ideological threat. This could be a consequence of the literature’s focus on why a state may or may not constitute a threat (or is perceived as such), while showing less interest in distinguishing between different forms of threat representations, or why and how one representation assumes dominance. Of course, the dominance of one representation (the ideological one) does not imply the absence of alternatives (such as a geopolitical one), or unequivocal agreement among all observers. Nonetheless, the representation of the China threat predominantly through an ideological lens is surprising for three reasons.

First, compared to the early decades of the People’s Republic, China’s international behaviour is less ideological and – at least in some aspects – less strategically oriented. There is so far little evidence that the 21st century CCP is actively seeking to promote its form of governance abroad, or aiming to strategically undermine the functioning of democracies. As such, many of the concerns regularly cited – such as the appeal of China’s model to authoritarian states or democratic erosion – are predominantly a by-product of the CCP’s governance success at home or preoccupation with domestic regime stability, rather than part of an explicit and comprehensive Chinese strategy to shape the world in its own image (Weiss ; Zhao , p. 3).

Second, there has been a re-evaluation of many aspects of China’s behaviour that had not previously been considered particularly ideological – or even threatening. While Xi has expanded foreign ‘united front’ work (Brady ), the deployment of such efforts as well as China’s ‘soft power’ campaigns have a long and well-documented heritage (Shambaugh ; Lee ). For example, an issue that has become a concern recently is China’s Confucius Institutes, which are accused of spreading propaganda under the guise of teaching Chinese language and culture (Jakhar ). However, 350 of these institutes, many of them in Western countries, have been established around the world for almost a decade (Shambaugh , p. 245). While they drew some criticism at an earlier time, Confucius Institutes were not as anywhere near as controversial as they have become in recent years.

The idea of an ideologically driven China threat is not entirely new: it was present in the United States in the early years of the Cold War and in the West more generally during the Cultural Revolution (Lovell ). However, the idea faded into the background following China’s gradual rapprochement with capitalist powers in the late 1970s (Turner , pp. 121–126). Despite disillusionment after the Tiananmen massacre, the China discourse was characterised by military and economic dangers and opportunities, which meant that the ideological dimension took a back seat (Nymalm ; Yang and Liu ). While observers were far from oblivious of the Chinese government’s oppressive rule at home, concerns about the party state’s international ideological influence were more limited. Although some observers highlighted ideological differences to predict political tensions between China and the United States (as e.g. reported in Broomfield ), China was not seen as a grave threat to the flourishing of liberal democracy in Western countries. Krauthammer (), for instance, noted that while China needed to be contained, there was ‘no ideological component to this struggle’. If there was talk of an ideological challenge from China in the 2000s, it chiefly revolved around alternative models of economic development (Ramo ). However, this was seen as problematic for new and struggling democracies, and not for the long-established democracies of the West. This makes the recent return of an ideological threat from China to Western liberal democracies all the more striking.