Race, Grand Strategy, and American Opinion on China

• In Event: Race and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order

Abstract

Do Americans perceive China as an existential – and racial – threat (“yellow peril”), driving popular support for the country’s increasingly confrontational China policies? How best can we theorize and evaluate the potential role of racial thinking in shaping American views of China and support for competing visions of U.S. grand strategy toward the rising great power? In this paper, I propose that the perception of China as a threat to “the West” comprises a key unifying force behind the emergence of a hawkish American consensus on China and explains the concurrent rise of anti-Chinese and broader anti-Asian racial resentment in American society. Specifically, I argue that the view of China as a civilizational threat brings together proponents of different visions of American grand strategy – including neo-conservatives, far-right unilateralists, and left-leaning liberal internationalists, backing up Washington’s persistent pursuit of American primacy and liberal hegemony in the world. Building on the IR literature on the hierarchical model of foreign policy postures, I first theorize and demonstrate through a nationally representative survey that civilizational worldviews, configured along three key dimensions, work as one of the core values that structure the foreign policy orientations of the American public. Next, I examine whether some of the elements of such civilizational worldviews – e.g., the belief in the superiority of Western values and traditions – predict Americans’ perception of China as a major security threat and support for hawkish foreign policy measures. Finally, utilizing various measures of racial attitudes, I investigate the interconnection between civilizational worldviews, China policy preferences, and anti-Asian sentiment across groups of different partisan and foreign policy orientations. Bringing race into the discussion of American grand strategy, foreign policy postures, and public opinion on China, the paper provides a novel perspective on the prospect of peace and conflict in contemporary U.S.-China relations.

Author

• D.G. Kim, Harvard University