Why Does America Hate China?

Nancy O'Brien Simpson

There is a truth we rarely speak aloud in America:
our nation often needs an enemy.

During the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union — an existential "other" that justified vast military budgets, covert interventions, and a permanent sense of national urgency. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a vacuum opened. For a time, terrorism filled the role of adversary, after 9/11 turned a faceless "enemy" into a justification for endless wars. But even the concept of terrorism could not sustain the military-industrial complex forever.

Enter China.

In the past thirty years, China has transformed itself from a largely rural economy into the world's second-largest economy, with a GDP of over $18 trillion as of 2024 — rivaling America's own $27 trillion figure. It leads in sectors once considered the exclusive domain of the West: green energy, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and global infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.

China's rise is not inherently hostile. It is, in many ways, a mirror of America's own ambitions: prosperity, influence, security. Yet to American political elites, it feels like a challenge to the old order — an unsettling reminder that hegemony is not guaranteed.

And so fear steps in, shouting louder than reason.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense requested a staggering $842 billion budget, much of it justified by "strategic competition" with China. Defense contractors profit handsomely from this framing; their stock prices rise every time tensions escalate. News outlets, eager for ratings, amplify stories that paint China as an unstoppable menace. Politicians from both major parties find it easier to unite around fear than to propose a humbler, more cooperative role for America on the global stage.

Fear becomes profitable. Fear becomes politically useful.
But fear also blinds us.

It blinds us to the simple human truth:
that beyond governments, beyond trade wars, beyond military posturing, there are just people.
Mothers, fathers, students, artists, dreamers — in both countries — who have no interest in conflict, who long for collaboration, understanding, and peace.

Imagine, for a moment, what it would look like if America chose love instead of fear.
Imagine joint research projects tackling climate change.
Imagine cultural exchanges on a massive scale — literature, art, science, and medicine — binding two ancient, proud civilizations into something greater than either could be alone.
Imagine two giants not competing to dominate, but lifting each other higher.

This isn't naïve optimism. It’s the deeper realism — the understanding that the greatest threats we face are not nations, but extinction-level problems: pandemics, rising seas, dwindling resources. Problems that can only be solved together.

It is easier to build bombs than bridges.
It is easier to scare than to dream.
But dream we must.

The true enemy is not China, nor America.
It is fear.
It is smallness of spirit.
It is the stubborn refusal to see a future where love, not dominance, leads the way.

The choice is ours.
It always has been.