Not yet. But 20 years ago, we weren't having this conversation of China even being seen as a threat. Back in the day, China was simply and exotic communist land that the West exploited for cheap manufacturing. Now it's appearing to be going down the path of militarily deterring the US and competing in the tech field.

Ah... China has been a one-party police state with intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles for my entire adult life (I'm in my 40s). The only thing I don't understand is why anyone ever thought they weren't a threat.

Their no first use policy perhaps

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#China

That seems to be a useful policy when you're on your way to being a world power.

It also seems to be the kind of policy that will be broken when convenient after becoming a world power.

...in a world where no one else has nukes.

>Not yet. But 20 years ago, we weren't having this conversation of China even being seen as a threat.

Twenty years ago, Japan was the "threat" and the zeitgeist was full of tropes of Japanese technology taking over the world.

Farther back than that even, go watch movies like Gung Ho from 1986 with Michael Keaton which did a good job at vilifying Japanese companies/Japan.

>The local auto plant in fictional Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, which supplied most of the town's jobs, has been closed for nine months. The former foreman Hunt Stevenson goes to Tokyo to try to convince the Assan Motors Corporation to reopen the plant. The Japanese company agrees and, upon their arrival in the U.S., they take advantage of the desperate work force to institute many changes. The workers are not permitted a union, are paid lower wages, are moved around within the factory so that each worker learns every job, and are held to seemingly impossible standards of efficiency and quality. Adding to the strain in the relationship, the Americans find humor in the demand that they do calisthenics as a group each morning and that the Japanese executives eat their lunches with chopsticks and bathe together in the river near the factory. The workers also display a poor work ethic and lackadaisical attitude toward quality control.

Japan wasn't run by a dictator, didn't have tens of thousands of people from a particular religious group placed into concentration camps, or owned so much stock in particular US companies that they can get those very same US companies to bend over to their demands.

It's not the same, and you know that.

Japan has put almost as much money ($1B) into US treasuries as China ($1.1B) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22331.pdf

Since China is "new money", Japan must have held more US debt at some point. It seems unlikely to me that this would not also extend to holding stakes in American companies.

I was talking about the economic threat. I completely agree that The Japan of twenty years ago was a much freer place than China today and that they are not the same thing in terms of authoritarianism.

Economically though, the two situations are similar.

1957 is an interesting year. In the United States that's the year that Control Data Corporation was formed in the US. Seymour Cray, the namesake of cray supercomputers, would join it a year later and would go on towards the rapid process of turning what were glorified room-sized calculators into the computers that we now take for granted and that would rapidly take over all forms of technological development. In China that was the year that Mao Zedong would begin to try to implement socialism in China. Over the years that followed tens of millions of Chinese would literally starve to death.

Over the next decade to 1969 Mao would start his 'Cultural Revolution' which would see millions of Chinese 'purged', one way or the other, extensive class warfare, and the destruction of undesirable elements referencing their cultural and religious past. By contrast in the US in 1969 we would put the first man on the moon. In 1976 Mao would die and end up, after a brief power struggle, being replaced by Deng Xiaoping in 1982. He opened China to foreign investment and rapidly transitioned China to a system more driven by free market economics that persists to this day.

In the two decades from 1960 to 1980 China's economy grew about 165%. In the twenty years from 1980 to 2000, it grew 555%. In the twenty years from 1998 to 2018 it grew 465%.

In the two decades from 1960 to 1980 the US economy grew about 111%. In the twenty years from 1980 to 2000, it grew 95%. In the twenty years from 1998 to 2018 it grew 45%.

The only reason 1960 to 1980 in China looks not as awful as it was is because of rapid population growth, mass starvations notwithstanding.

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Historically China was a world leader in technology. Wiki has a list of Chinese inventions which you can compare and contrast to their western counterparts in time, method, and source [1]. In modern times they made some bad decisions and at some of the worst possible times. Of course this should make you ask (as it did me) what about the mid ages? The period of time after Chinese tech supremacy but before the modern era? This [2] article offers an interesting argument that seems quite compelling.

One of the big differences is that China was a unified and stable empire. By contrast Europe was a chaotic land of never ending conquest and war. And periods of stability always had an underlying tension of imminent war. This competition and lack of unification within Europe meant that inventors, scholars, and others were free to do as they felt. If one country doesn't like what you're doing and declares you a heathen or other naughty word, so what? Move 100 miles and you're now in another country that's happy to go against the desires of the other country if not only because it's that other country!

China wanted stability and security. Europe wanted progress. It's interesting the compare and contrast this to modern times. No single answer fits clearly, but it's certain that times have changed.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions

[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/28/why-t...

> One of the big differences is that China was a unified and stable empire.

Unified, yes; nominally, for short stretches of time. Stable, no; there was always war somewhere over land and power.

Look at the animation of territorial changes at the top of [1] and at the quick succession of dynasties. Consider that each time territory was conquered or a new dynasty rose to power, this was accomplished by war; and there were many more rebellions that were defeated by the ruling dynasty and didn't change much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasties_in_Chinese_history