Political Science

Yiqin Fu

Threat Perception in the U.S–China Great Power Competition
2020–21 Survey Lab Project

Recent Pew and Gallup polls consistently find that American attitudes towards China have reached all-time lows, with more than 70% of respondents reporting unfavorable views and half naming China as the U.S.’ “greatest enemy.” What beliefs undergird the rising level of perceived threat? Drawing on a large literature that studies how information affects policy attitudes, I elicit Americans’ beliefs about China along several dimensions of strength and ideology and experimentally vary the information treatments they receive. I find that Americans misperceive China’s strength and ideology and that information reduces threat perception. The size of misperceptions and the effect of information treatments, however, exhibit large heterogeneity across respondents.

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