Yiqin Fu

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.