That the CCP attitude towards privacy, civil liberties and the legal rights of its citizens gets exported to the rest of the world.
China's real threat is to any non-Han ethnic minority locked in the creepingly expansive orwellian nightmare of an empire that is gradually emerging.
Right now it's the Uighurs, and when the Dalai Lama bites it, and the false Panchen finds his false replacement it'll be the Tibetans too (or again).
America's ruling ideology is the almighty petro-dollar, and if you think the Chinese over-class is any less capitalistic or energy hungry than America's (albeit with a little extra corporate espionage and a few more paper dragons), you're mistaken and deluded.
> Right now it's the Uighurs, and when the Dalai Lama bites it, and the false Panchen finds his false replacement it'll be the Tibetans too (or again).
I think China is a threat even to Hong Kong and Taiwan where Han is the ethnic majority. Ethnicity is not the issue, ideology is.
the rest of what china is doing is consistent -> "mind your own business".
yes. maybe somebody should clear up whether taiwan is part of china or vice versa. maybe this is like south china sea too. they think because they've been using it like their backyard pool for 4000 yrs its actually theirs.
but it certainly didn't do syria, libya, iraq, afghanistan, crimea.
Invading and annexing neighboring territories like Tibet, Sprately Islands. Committing genocide on ethnic minorities like the Uighars. Surpressing the political will of their own people by doing things like mass murder in Tiananmen Square. And these aren't even the fears but rather just the typical acts of the CCP. Keep in mind that China is a nuclear power that intimidates and wishes to invade its neighbors.
Also, notably, there's no singular American ruling ideology in terms of grand strategy, and individual opinions, even ignorant, racist, uninformed ones not espoused by elites, can have an impact. There are plenty in both the libertarian and the progressive camps who vehemently favor a policy of restraint in grand strategic terms. America did change its entire view as to the country's role several times between 1915 and 1941. China has a unified, mandated singular ideology that the state creates and makes official, sometimes for the sake of consistency the definition of words are changed to aid those efforts (like Mao redefining "democratic" and "the people" for the nation's constitution, unilaterally of course). The CCP's raison d'etre is rooted in ethno-nationalist grievance politics and just as most people in China know little beyond what's seen in the media about the US, the inverse is true as well, and so a lot of people will view the threat in a lot of ways, some blatant in its xenophobia and racism (hell, there's still a chapter in the US Code that's titled "the Exclusion of the Chinese"), some on more nuanced, ideological, liberalism grounds, some on zero-sum grand strategy hegemonic thinking. But it's important to know that CHina wants to portray itself as a bigger threat than it really is and while its citizens are quite used to and are usually cynical about officical messges the state sends out, America's lack of experience in discerning between real and embellished and conjured aspects of official lines pose a rael, atlhough surmountable, threat.
Meanwhile, ask yourself how is it that cryptocurrencies are so big in China, in spite of government efforts to intimidate founders and launch its state-backed competitor. Ask yourself how successful is the long-standing national ban of porn? Or even truly the anti-religion movement, est. 1945. China's real threat is America taking it at face value and not critically enough. They've had a lot of decades to hone messaging.