‘The Threat from China’*

Abstract

T nHE assumption, or axiom, that underlies western political and strategic thinking about the problems of Asia is that the designs of Communist China are basically militant and aggressive. Sometimes this is summed up in the unexamined and unthinking phrase 'the threat from China'-for example in a Times leading article on June 18 this year; sometimes it is elaborated, even embroidered, as in this passage from a 1964 article by George Kennan: