There is no empirical evidence that China is an existential threat. The further securitization – instead of fixing any “issues” – exacerbate already tense situations. Therefore, de-securitization is required in any areas with a possibility of cooperation.

The United States has to objectively assess the situation to determine whether China is an existential threat to its survival and act accordingly. Few researchers and scholars now believe that China doesn’t pose an existential threat to either the existence of the United States or the security of the international system. In an article published in Foreign Policy, Micheal D. Swaine argues that China does not pose an existential threat to the United States (Swaine, 2021). Politicians, military officers, and pundits take turns to highlight this issue but according to Swaine, the threat perception is not based on empirical data. Wong and Myers (2020), under the title “Officials Push US-China Relations toward Point of No Return” asserted that US government officials use rhetoric and criticism against China to get support in domestic elections, according to the other it was President Trump Policies that started a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the two major powers. According to Li (2021), a famous Chinese western educated scholar, China is the only country in history which gained such huge amount of power without firing a single bullet or invading another country, so he doesn’t see China’s rise as an existential threat to the US (Shah, 2023). While the majority of research is concerned with the causes of confrontation and the possibility of conflict, no organized piece of work has been done on the process of Securitization, the process through which threats are being created through discourse so that extraordinary measures against that threat can be justified. As China being an existential threat to the US and international order cannot be justified by empirical evidence, actors like government officials, politicians, and pundits try to frame it as such to divert resources, attention, and focus toward that specified threat. The Securitization theory doesn’t rule out the possibility of conflict or cooperation, rather it presumes that both scenarios are possible. Further Securitization of the issue like seeing economic, political, technological, and cultural relations through the prism of security may exacerbate the already tense situation (Song, 2015). The American perception of China as an existential threat is not only based on China’s rise but also on a long history of animosity and distrust against Asians. In his book “Has China Won” Mahbubani (2020) argues that the animosity against the Asian nation is rooted in ‘Yellow Peril’ a racist metaphor that regards East Asians as an existential threat to Western world. In “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” Hodgson (2009) argues Securitization of US-CHINA Relations… that Americans believe that their political, economic, and moral values are superior to all other nations; therefore, they should be considered universal and admired by all. This sense of exceptionalism is wrong and is a barrier to understanding issues through reason. In a nutshell, looking at the relationship through a zero-sum game and a cold war mentality will further worsen the situation; therefore, a process of de-securitization is required in areas where there is a possibility of cooperation like trade, climate change, terrorism, and nuclear nonproliferation.