I've been seeing a huge amount of anti-Chinese sentiment online, from obvious places like reddit, to even misinformed friends on social media falling victim to viral posts filled with misinformation.
What are we to make of this? Is this the slow march to war, by portraying them as pure evil, à la the fake story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies to help get the public on board with our military response? It seems disadvantageous for the US and their allies to fight China, as we are incredibly reliant upon them economically and don't stand to gain much from the conflict.
Are these the irrational decisions of a dying empire? Or is there something else at play?
The US has realized that they severely fucked up by allowing China to gain such a large dominance in manufacturing and the world economy in general. They are now scrambling to oppose China in any way possible. They're likely never gonna try to go into a direct war with China, but they are almost certainly trying to build a multi-country coalition to oppose China's growing global influence. Whatever move they make next, they are putting the propaganda machine into high gear so that their citizens and citizens of other countries are willing to go along with whatever comes next.
the multi-country coalition is the first world and they already built it
Maybe, but they have to get other "first world" countries on board with attempting to economically oppose China, which would be an extremely painful endeavour for any country. We've already seen the EU decide to continue to get closer to China economically, despite America urging them not to. Even now, Australia is showing some apprehension to the idea of joining America's "anti-china league." First and foremost, these countries care about their material interests, so as long as China appears non-threatening enough to them, they have a lot more incentive to stick close to them economically than to cave to US interests.
Do you believe that the growing economic power of China will cause a contradiction to emerge in the national bourgeoisie of the first world? It does seem evident that this is happening
Ultimately the bourgeoisie of each "first world" country are acting in what they believe to be their best interests (no surprise there.) Most nations that aren't the US have made the assessment that China is unlikely to pose any large threat to them any time soon, even if they gain more economic dominance globally. The reason we see the American bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of other nations acting in a way that is contradictory to each other is because the American bourgeoisie have something to lose if there is an economic "changing of the guard" from the US to China, whereas the bourgeoisie of other first-world nations would be relatively unphased by the transition.
I think the only one they might get to go along relatively easily is the UK, because they seem pretty desperate to be the US' good lap dog, so that the US in exchange is nice to them in the future when it comes to trade deals and all that.
What if, hear me out, the Anglosphere Boys got together for one last job?..