Drivers of America's China‐Threat Narrative During 2017–2021

ABSTRACT

The “China‐Threat” has become a central frame in U.S. debate about U.S.–China relations. This study examines how that narrative evolved during the first Trump administration (2017–2021) and what drove its salience in the U.S. information environment. Departing from conceptual and survey‐based research, it constructs weekly time‐series measures from Google Trends to capture public attention to the “China‐Threat,” to key U.S. actors (Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo), and to China's policy posture as reflected in U.S. attention. Evidence from Granger tests, a vector autoregression, and an autoregressive distributed lag model indicates that, in the long run, China's own policies are the only robust driver of the U.S.–China‐threat narrative; elite rhetoric has short‐lived effects at most. The findings suggest that, beyond a single administration, sustained attention to Chinese actions matters more for the narrative environment than episodic U.S. messaging—an important implication for how foreign‐policy choices toward China are debated, justified, and constrained in public.