COVID-19 Not the Only Threat From China

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Heritage Foundation

The destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union two years later lulled the West into a false sense of security. Many appeared to believe that an age of unending peace and prosperity had been ushered in. 

While terrorism would become a stateless threat, most people probably thought it to be an aberration and at least manageable.

If people paid much attention to the Chinese brand of communism, most saw it as less of a threat than the Soviet Union with which we had seven decades of tensions culminating in a near nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

China seemed content to stay within its borders. Unlike Moscow, Beijing did not appear to have expansionist goals. Since President Richard Nixon began the slow process of establishing diplomatic relations with the communist regime with his visit in 1972, China was still regarded as something less than a major threat to the West and especially the United States.