Americans View China as Top Threat, Fear War with the CCP

Recent polling shows Americans aren’t just waking up to the problems with the Biden Administration. In addition to recognizing that domestic threat to America’s continued success and prosperity, they’re also gradually coming to terms with the snarling threat posed by the Chinese dragon and worried about war with that communist nation.

Evidence of that comes from the Reagan National Defense Survey, released by the Ronald Reagan Institute, which found that:

“For the first time in our survey, a majority of the American people identify a single country as the greatest threat facing the United States: China. Fifty-two percent of Americans name China when asked which country they see as the greatest threat to the United States, while only 14% say Russia.” 

So, though bureaucratic apparatchiks like Lt. Col. Vindman and Democrat political hacks might play up the Russia threat, Americans are seeing through that messaging. Rather than worry over a country with an economy barely the size of Texas’s, they’re growing focused on the communist dragon.

The Institute helpfully provided this graph to show how Americans have changed their views of the respective threats facing America over time:

What’s clear is that though Americans still recognize other nations pose a challenge to America, especially Russia and North Korea, China is far and away the threat on the forefront of the minds of most Americans.

As Fox News reports, that’s a massive shift in the space of only a few years, though it hasn’t affected all Americans equally; Republicans hold a much more hawkish view of China than Democrats:

In contrast, only 21% viewed China as the top threat in 2018, when 30% had said Russia. In 2021, China was in front for members of both parties, as 44% of Democrats saw it as the biggest threat, with 64% of Republicans saying the same. For Democrats this is a sharp spike, as just 20% of respondents from the party named China as the greatest threat in February of this year.

Additionally, while the economic threat posed by China is the largest concern for both Democrats and Republicans, with other major worries being the threat posed by it to the supply chain, its massive military buildup, and its human rights abuses, a supermajority of Americans are worried about war with China. As Fox News reports:

Those worries go hand in hand with fear of a potential military conflict between the U.S. and China, as 71% of Americans said they were concerned about a possible war. That fear was shared by a majority of participants from both parties, as 66% of Democrats agreed with this, as did 79% of Republicans.

And that’s for good reason. While the US military remains focused on diversity, climate change, and wokeness, the Chinese state has committed to a massive campaign of promoting masculinity among the Chinese populace while simultaneously wearing down Taiwan’s armed forces with repeated aerial incursions.

In other words, China is cultivating a generation of warriors and preparing for war while the US is preparing a generation of social justice warriors for promoting wokeness.

Almost as worrisome is the fact that America is gradually falling behind China technologically. As Fox reports:

Recently, a former Reagan administration official, Michael Sekora, told Fox News that he believes the U.S. will not be able to catch up to China technologically, no matter how much money is poured into research and development, until the Biden administration adopts a different national technology strategy. Currently, he said, the U.S. employs finance-based planning, which he said boils down to, “We are going to spend more money than they are.”

So, though it’s worrisome that America is falling behind China and appears unready for war in a way that China is not, at least the American populace is waking up the Chinese threat.