WASHINGTON – Amid wide consensus in the US Congress as well as the intelligence and national security establishment – and amplified by the media – that China is a threat, a few in the foreign policy community are increasingly questioning whether America is being overly hawkish on the Asian superpower.

On Wednesday, Mr Jude Blanchette, Freeman chair in China Studies at the Washington think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told National Public Radio: “We have to articulate an end state here that is some version of coexistence because the alternative, frankly, is unthinkable.”