Description
Recently, the idea that we are on the verge of a new Cold War, which this time sees China as the rival to the US, has been transformed by both media and academics into a recurrent topic. Especially, Trump’s diplomatic line has exasperated the US dialogue with China, which took an aggressive attitude while striving to get a greater say in international affairs in the face of the US reprimands. It exposed their relations, due to rising tensions, to a risk of breakdown that lasts still today, despite the effort of the Biden administration of treating China as a competitor and no longer as an enemy.
Portraying China as a threat the West should protect against, however, is not a forward-looking posture, hence, a sociological approach suggests that prophecies become self-fulfilling whenever the agents tend to frame what happens in a context which they are familiar with. According to this logic, it is likely that the analogy with the Cold War, might be distorting the facts, placing the US-China competition in the framework of an ideological battle, boosting both sides to adopt an excessive reciprocal hostile posture.
