This paper examines US public opinion after the drastic changes in US–China relations during the Trump presidency. I argue that the perceived China threat influences Americans' evaluation of the China–Taiwan tension. Based on the US dataset of the 2018 Survey on Global Attitudes and Trends by the Pew Research Center, Americans tend to perceive the China–Taiwan tension as a serious problem for the USA when Americans identify China as a major threat and its military strength as a concern. As US public opinion shapes the US foreign policy on China, the findings shed light on the public support for the ongoing US–China conflict.

This paper argues that “China threat” was largely a myth and that the China factor was not the critical factor leading to the re-affirmation process of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the mid-1990s. It took the 1994 Korean crisis for this to materialize. The China factor was important only as a general background, and the role of the U.S.-Japan alliance in dealing with the rise of China was implicit, remaining in the domain of managing shifting major power relations after the Cold War rather than being directed against the myth of a “China threat.” The paper also argues that preoccupation with Japan as an independent security pole is an important source of confusion about the nature of Japan's security policies and its profile therein, which, as before, will continue to be premised on the U.S.-Japan alliance. It explains actual records of Japanese security behaviors as a series of attempts to cope with the dual identity as a security actor. Japan's readjustment to the post-Cold War security environment, founded upon the re-affirmation of the U.S.-Japan alliance, was a clear case in point.