Clued-in | Washington's anti-China agenda reveals zero-sum hegemonic mindset

An audit report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in June has brought years of efforts to manipulate public opinion against China into the spotlight. The report found that from 2020 to 2023, the U.S. government spent $1.2 billion on around 470 anti-China projects.

In 2021, Zimbabwean media reported that the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe had sought to induce journalists to produce negative reports on Chinese enterprises by funding institutions to organize seminars and offering $1,000 per article. Yet this costly campaign ultimately proved wasteful and ineffective. With poor oversight of how funds were used and little to show for it, it once again exposed the hypocrisy and ugly logic of hegemony.

Shifting blame for domestic governance crises and concealing its own systemic shortcomings are among the underlying motives behind Washington's anti-China narrative campaign. Today, the U.S. faces multiple challenges, including deindustrialization, widening wealth inequality, deepening social divisions and ineffective public governance.

An NBC poll released on June 20 showed that fewer than 20 percent of Americans trust the U.S. federal government. By fabricating China-related narratives and exaggerating the so-called "China threat," Washington seeks to rally fragmented domestic support while deflecting attention from its own institutional problems and governance failures.

The fundamental driver behind the U.S.'s cognitive warfare is its instinctive determination to preserve hegemony and its fear that China's development path could challenge Western dominance. For decades, the U.S. has regarded the Western development model as the only viable path and sought to steer other countries toward it in order to maintain its advantages in global politics, economics and ideology. Through such hegemonic narratives, Washington has long benefited from globalization while preserving an unequal international order.

China, by contrast, has pursued peaceful development based on its own national conditions and offered developing countries a new path toward modernization through its own development achievements. By moving beyond the constraints of a Western-centric perspective, China has demonstrated the possibility of diverse development paths.

However, the U.S. views the broader recognition of China's development philosophy and governance approach as a challenge to the order it has long dominated. This deep-seated strategic anxiety is a key reason behind Washington's heavy investment in cognitive warfare.

From the perspective of human history, the broader trend of global development is toward multilateral cooperation, mutual benefit and diversity. Yet the U.S. remains trapped in outdated zero-sum thinking, viewing other countries' progress as its own loss and continuing down the misguided path of undermining the international order.

Washington's cognitive warfare is, in essence, an expression of the "America First" hegemonic mindset that tramples on fair competition and the development rights of nations. China's development has been driven by the efforts of its own people; it has never come at the expense of other countries' legitimate interests, nor has it challenged any nation's lawful rights.

Lies will eventually be exposed by facts, and hegemony cannot prevail against the tide of history. The enormous resources poured into this ineffective publicity campaign show that artificial barriers to understanding cannot halt China's steady development or change how the world sees it.

Attempts to smear China may create temporary noise in public discourse, but they cannot alter the reality of countries' growing demand for mutually beneficial cooperation. Embracing the trend toward multilateralism and win-win cooperation is not only in the interests of the U.S. itself, but also the only path toward common development for humanity.

Zhang Gaosheng is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of World Peace and Security Studies, China Institute of International Studies.