STOP BEING MEAN TO THE CHINESE! Young Americans oppose a new cold war with China, says a report published yesterday. There’s a huge gulf between the mega-hostile attitudes of Washington’s old men, and the open-mindedness of the new generation in the country, said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for US-China relations at the International Crisis Group, in an essay for the Financial Times, published yesterday. “Though many China experts in Washington think Beijing’s mounting power and widespread congressional anxiety will eventually compel the US to resume a more confrontational posture, for now the public does not seem inclined to support a ‘new cold war’,” he wrote. . POISONING MINDS This is interesting. As well pushing the “China threat” theme in media across the country, Washington funds or co-funds multiple organizations around the world to poison minds against the Asian country, including the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Radio Free Asia, and literally scores of media outlets, including many in Asian countries and in Europe, we note. But despite the billion-dollar budget to demonize China, the process is failing around the world, including with young adults and youth in the U.S., multiple surveys show. . 'CHINA THREAT' NARRATIVE FAILING The standard “China threat” fearmongering technique favored by Joe Biden and others may never come back, Wyne said. After the Trump presidency ends, US policymakers “should not assume that the country’s allies will support a renewed effort to counterbalance China nor expect that invoking the ‘China threat’ will imbue younger Americans with a nationalist sense of shared purpose,” he wrote. . HOSTILITY EFFORTS FAILING A host of surveys show the failure of efforts to create hostility. The new generation in the U.S., in particular, show a positive attitude to China, Wyne said. - The number of people in the U.S. who call China an “enemy” fell from 42% in March 2024 to just 28% in a January 2026 Pew Research survey. - Only 27% of 18- to 29-year-olds think that their lives would become “worse” were China’s power to overtake America’s, according to a Carnegie Endowment survey in November 2025. - A solid 62% of those aged 18-34 want the U.S. to “co-operate with China and improve U.S.-China relations”, while just 29 per cent want it to “stand up to China”. - 82% of Gen Z respondents say that the bilateral economic relationship has been good for the U.S. over the past quarter-century, and 68% want to encourage Chinese investment, said a May 2026 American Compass survey. . BUT WAR DANGER REMAINS But there’s one angle to Wyne’s report in the Financial Times that many people may disagree with. He quotes positive things that Donald Trump has said about Chinese leader Xi Jinping, indicating that the US President and the new generation in the US think alike. Two caveats should be highlighted here. First, taken as a whole, Trump’s statements about Xi and China are so plentiful and self-contradictory that one can cherry-pick them to make a positive or negative impression. . SERIOUSLY BAD IDEAS Second, the US military media industrial complex is clearly pressing ahead with plans for a war on China – the recent RIMPAC exercise, involving some 30 nations, barely bothered to hide this. As part of this plan, we see the continuing recycling of the "China is just about to invade Taiwan" narrative, which has been wrong annually for at least forty years. A US war on China would be a terribly bad idea. But that’s the problem. As we can all see with Iran, the system shows that extremely bad ideas end up on desks in Washington DC, where, scarily often, they get an instant green light. . .