DISSENTING VOICES DA. Refuse their priviliged mandate to 'weigh the 1AC' in the midst of racialized discursive rhetoric against the Other---this justifies extermination of dissenting voices within debate, and countries outside of it.

The central argument of this article is that the current hegemonic consensus in the ‘Global North’ about the ‘China threat’ is not just the result of a neutral analysis of reality, but rather a discursive construction remarkably informed by global privilege and practices that aim to maintain such privilege. I have analysed the relation between the prevailing anti-China narrative and the entitlements and supremacism that stem from the global privilege enjoyed by the ‘Global North’, with a particular focus on the United States, across a diversity of domains (political, military, economic, technologic, cultural, and academic, as well as the relevance of ‘white privilege’). Moreover, the feeling that those shared global privileges are jeopardised and, therefore, should be safeguarded, is a pivotal factor that enables the articulation of otherwise highly heterogeneous groups in the ‘Global North’ vis-à-vis the common ‘enemy’: China. Simultaneously, this contingently sedimented imaginary serves to legitimise the global privileges and consequent domination of the international order by the ‘Global North’ as a universal good that China is not entitled to challenge.

Much as it transpired during the ‘Cold War’ against the Soviet Union, Manichean paradigms tend to define and perpetuate a frivolous and distorted division between virtuous heroes and dreadful villains. This is an unsophisticated and dichotomous ‘Schmittian’ worldview defined by the ‘culture of enmity’, which can be described as a discursive framework fixated on purposively identifying and constructing insurmountable differences with a chosen ‘Other’ to ultimately legitimate its elimination (see Brossat & Ruiz Casado, 2023). Carl Schmitt argued that the essence of the political lies in the distinction between friend and enemy, which derives from the most extreme case of emergency, war, overriding all other distinctions (Marchart, 2007, p. 41). The consolidation of these radically antagonistic relations of exteriority establishes a framework of normative constraints that also limits dissenting voices and thus pluralism within the democracies of the ‘Global North’, hindering a balanced discussion and restricting the available policy alternatives—be it due to firm belief that anti-China policies are the only acceptable ones or that deviating from them would be met with opposition from the general public (e.g., for the reaction to the words of French President Macron after he visited China, see Rankin, 2023).

To clarify, this is not to say that China should be considered a benevolent power from a normative standpoint, but rather that current discursive practices tend to overplay the danger and depict it as unilateral and independent of any actions undertaken by the ‘Global North’. The invisibility of global privilege limits the capacity to empathise with the foreign, subordinate ‘Other’, and precludes the understanding of how the hype of the ‘China threat’ can, as well, be seen as a menace by China. International relations between China and the ‘Global North’ do not solely depend on how the former decides to behave, but also on how the latter interprets and reacts to those actions, as well as how it engages with the material existence of relations of domination and subordination—which are a form of structural violence (see Galtung, 1996). By placing the discursive construction of the ‘China threat’ in connection with the materiality of privilege in a global context, this study has highlighted the importance of self- reflection on privilege, the critique of unequal international relations, and the need of empathy when it comes to evaluating the fears and needs of the ‘Other’.