Featuring analyst Ali Wyne of the Rand Corporation, a podcast of 28 January 2019 hosted by the CHINAfrica Project (a non-profit educational initiative founded in South Africa partnering with NGOs in the United States), explains that reference to a new Cold War risks conflating a number of major distinctions from the Cold War with the USSR.
The current confrontation against China springs from a "collapse" of the original hope that bringing China into the global liberal order would eventually result in China becoming more like the West, at least in economic terms. The disillusionment is exacerbated by consensus across the aisle that China's growth so far has been at America's expense, short-changing in level-playing field, reciprocity and intellectual property protection.
Nevertheless, China has largely been branded by the United States as a competitor, albeit an almost peer competitor, rather than an out-right antagonist across the board. This is because (a) there is much more mutual dependence in the global supply and value chain, (b) any rivalry remains largely, though not entirely, economic and technological, rather than mainly military and ideological and (c) there is no ideologically-linked opposing bloc of "communist" nations. The main aim of the current pushback against China remains the creation of "fairer" rules of the game for America to compete with China, apart from a degree of containment of China's assertiveness.
Additionally, some of the backlash against China is due to the global rise of anti-globalization populism. This is informed by a frustrations and anger of those who feel being left out by the wave of globalization, who feel cheated by the elite and powerful in their respective society. Brexit in the UK and the Yellow Vests in France are echo-chambers of similar frustrations of the grassroots in America, of which Trump is largely an outcome.
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