Is China a bigger threat to the U.S. today than U.S.S.R. was?
It is not that China threatens the US. It is the US that considers China a threat.
The threat is not military, nor economic, but faith.
The West proclaimed that only the Western political system can make economic development. The West claimed that China cannot develop to a decent level if China does not adapt to the Western political system. China, however, developed without following the Western path of development. China does not rely on the slave trade, opium trade, colonialism, and the so-called Western democracy. Yet, China is developing faster than the West now and faster than the West before. This is a fact the West cannot accept. This constitutes the threat, a threat to Western faith.
The US still has the most powerful military power, monopoly the international finance, and the most advanced technology, brain drained most talents to the US, accumulated in the last 200 years a huge capital, and control of more resources aboard and at home. If the US has the most advanced political system, as it claimed, it should have no problem competing with China in any area. Yet the US cannot compete with China in 5G. This makes the US paranoid. This shakes the faith that the US has a superior democracy that can solve all problems better than any other political system.
China never threatens the US. China always suggests mutual respect and mutual benefit. China does not send aircraft carriers to the Mexican Gulf to proclaim freedom of navigation. China does not send surveillance airplanes to the US coastline.
China does not want to threaten any country. China has a vision of the Shared Future of Mankind. The West just cannot view others as equal and deny China equal respect. China does not crash when the US galvanizes its hard/soft/smart powers to suppress China, but the USSR crashed. This makes the US consider China a bigger threat than the former USSR.
It is not that China threatens the US. It is that China is not afraid of the threat from the US.
