Agreement About What, Disagreement About How Much: Australian Threat Perceptions of China, 1996–2025

ABSTRACT

Far more Australians see China as a threat to their country's security than did 20 years ago, but the headline figure hides what changed. Two distinct processes can raise it: more people recognising a threat at all, or those who already recognised one coming to regard it as severe. The analysis separates them, using the Australian Election Study, which has put the same question to voters after every federal election since 1996. The rise was predominantly of the first kind, and it occurred evenly across party lines. The second kind was one‐sided: Coalition supporters shifted from thinking a threat fairly likely to thinking it very likely, while for Labour supporters the same shift cannot be established. The divergence appears for China alone among the countries respondents were asked about, and is larger among the politically engaged—both consistent with supporters taking their lead from party signals, though neither establishes the mechanism. Australia's bipartisan consensus on China thus rests on a public that agrees about the character of the threat while drifting apart over its urgency, a division the usual way of reporting these data cannot show.