When hegemony masquerades as “common sense”: the US narrative war on China

US discourse casts China as a villain to sustain its global dominance

AI-generated image by Jostein Hauge

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), the Italian philosopher, journalist, politician, and revolutionary, is particularly well known for developing the concept of hegemony. According to Gramsci, hegemony refers to the way a ruling class maintains power not only through coercion, but through cultural and ideological leadership. Power is not merely about who controls the state — it’s also about who controls meaning, culture, and “common sense.”

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci articulated this nature of hegemony (paraphrased):

The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership.’ (…) A ruling class is not content to rule by force alone; it must also shape the convictions and habits of the masses. (…) Only when its worldview is accepted as common sense does its power become stable and enduring.

I’ve been reflecting on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony in the context of China’s rise and the economic and geopolitical rivalry unfolding between the US and China. In strands of US mainstream media, there’s a clear attempt to frame the American perspective as “global common sense.” Narratives portraying China as a calculating cheater, industrial thief, or authoritarian bogeyman are often pitched as neutral, objective, or moderate. This has paved the way for a new kind of American exceptionalism: China’s rise can be depicted as a bid for global domination — economically, politically, and militarily — with little self-examination from the US side.

Kaiser Kuo, host of the Sinica podcast, has offered one of the sharpest critiques of this phenomenon, highlighting the psychological dissonance Americans face when confronting a world no longer dominated by the US:

To understand why China sticks in the craw, one needs to appreciate the deeper psychological challenge it poses to US identity. For generations, Americans inhabited a national story that assured them they would always be first in the domains that matter most—innovation, technology, military might, economic dynamism, cultural magnetism. China’s achievements have systematically undermined pillar after pillar of American exceptionalism. Deep-rooted and often unconscious hierarchies still position the West as normative and other states as derivative. The moment of recognition and readjustment requires confronting those reflexes.

These reflexes indeed need to be confronted because they often play out as double standards in aspects of US public discourse. Palantir’s CTO, Shyam Sankar, recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which serves as a good example of the type of discourse I am referring to. In the piece, he claims that the Chinese Communist Party harbours a clear desire to see America fall. He accuses China of strangling US supply chains, unfairly subsidising its industries, and flooding foreign markets with Chinese goods. His pièce de résistance is the claim that no country has done more for Chinese prosperity than the United States.

These allegations rest on foundations as fragile as cracked ice, rooted in a familiar agenda: the preservation of US economic, political, and cultural hegemony. Let’s examine them one by one.

Before proceeding, let me be clear about what this critique targets. The arguments that follow challenge US policy and discourse — not the American people as such. This is not “anti-Americanism.” It is a critique of narratives manufactured and amplified by the US ruling class and mainstream media institutions, narratives designed to manufacture consent for policies that serve elite interests while claiming to represent universal values or national security imperatives.

Does China strangle US supply chains?

The reality is more complex than this charge suggests. Over the past few decades, the economic relationship between the US and China has been characterised by mutual dependence, though the benefits have been distributed asymmetrically. While American corporations have extracted enormous profits from Chinese manufacturing, Chinese workers and firms have often operated under compressed wages and tight profit margins.

Consider Apple, the US-based electronics giant. Apple has generated more profit in China than any other foreign company. Between 2015 and 2024, Apple made $227 billion in operating profit in China — over a quarter of its total operating profit during this period. In my book, The Future of the Factory, I show how Apple raked in 56% of the final retail price of iPhone models it released throughout the 2010s, without actually making any of the components. Meanwhile, the workers and firms who assembled the iPhone, mostly based in China, got a mere 1.5% of the final retail price.

This is hardly evidence of China “strangling” US supply chains; rather, it demonstrates how deeply American corporate interests have benefited from the relationship.

China’s economy and its workers have certainly benefited from foreign investment from the US over time. But they did so only by strategically using industrial and trade policy to ensure that economic integration served developmental goals rather than perpetuating dependency. China’s economic development required building independent, sovereign industrial capacity — a path US corporations have historically resisted when pursued by developing countries. The US has preferred arrangements that keep developing countries in subordinate positions within global supply chains. Where US investment and trade ties have occurred primarily on the terms of US corporations, long-term development has consistently failed to materialise.

Does China unfairly use industrial and trade policy?

China does indeed have an active state that intervenes strategically in markets to make the country more innovative, competitive, and technologically sophisticated. This includes subsidies. But such measures are hardly unique to China, nor are they inherently illegitimate.

The largest industrial subsidy program in modern history is the US CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in 2022 by President Biden. It authorises roughly $280 billion in funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors and related technologies. This represents a significant embrace of industrial policy by a country that has long criticised others for doing the same.

Historical context is also essential here. China’s subsidies and state intervention must be understood as part of a catch-up strategy employed by virtually every country that has successfully industrialised. State intervention through industrial policy — including subsidies, tariffs, and strategic investment — has been essential for technological advancement throughout modern economic history.

The US itself provides a telling example. During the 19th century, as it worked to catch up with Britain’s industrial prowess, the US maintained the world’s highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports. In the modern era, we see the US returning to these tools, having recognised that the liberal international order it championed no longer serves its interests as it once did.

Meanwhile, China’s trade policy measures, such as its recent export restrictions on rare earth metals, represent strategic responses to aggressive US actions, including the extensive tariffs introduced during the Trump administration.

Does China flood overseas markets with Chinese goods?

Yes, China does flood overseas markets with Chinese goods — and wealthy countries welcomed this with open arms until China became a competitor. They welcomed it because it hugely benefited their consumers and corporations. The price of all sorts of goods and industrial inputs in wealthy nations plummeted after China became more strongly integrated into the world economy.

Research has documented dramatic price declines for manufactured goods imports into the US relative to consumer prices in non-traded sectors between the 1980s and early 2010s, in some cases exceeding 40%. This was not an accident or an imposition; it was the intended outcome of policies that wealthy nations actively supported and encouraged.

The current backlash in the West against China’s rise reveals an uncomfortable truth: wealthy countries support globalisation when it reinforces existing hierarchies, but they resist it when it enables catch-up development. As JD Vance candidly stated at The American Dynamism Summit in March 2025: “The idea of globalisation was that rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things.” When China moved up that value chain, wealthy nations ironically decried that the rules of trade weren’t fair any longer.

China faces particularly intense criticism for flooding foreign markets with clean energy products, such as EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines. And, indeed, China dominates the global market for clean energy manufacturing: it manufactures about 80% of the world’s solar panels, 60% of the world’s wind turbines, 70% of the world’s EVs, and 75% of the world’s batteries — all at a lower cost than the West. But in the middle of a climate emergency, this is something we should celebrate rather than demonise. The accusation oddly seems to be that China is doing too much of something right.

It’s also worth noting the scale of China’s trade in per capita terms. Despite dominating certain sectors in absolute terms due to its population size, China’s per capita exports rank only 104th globally. This is far below Germany (26th), the UK (42nd), and the United States (63rd). In essence, the primary concern appears to be that China is a very large economy growing at a pace that challenges established hierarchies.

Is China a greater military threat to the world than the US?

Shyam Sankar’s commentary reveals a clear double standard: his framework assumes that the only legitimate global hierarchy is one with the US at its apex. While Sankar does not explicitly advocate military confrontation with China, his rhetoric strongly suggests this as a potential response should China continue its economic and technological development.

It is in the realm of military intervention where the contradictions in US discourse become most apparent. US political leaders and media frequently warn that China’s rise threatens global peace and stability. Yet this framing requires ignoring fundamental disparities in military behaviour between the two countries.

The historical record shows marked differences in patterns of military intervention. Since World War II, the US has been involved in more than 100 regime change operations — many targeting democratically elected governments — and has deployed military force in over 70 countries. The US currently maintains 902 active military bases in foreign countries. By contrast, China operates one foreign military base (in Djibouti) and has not engaged in a major military conflict since 1979.

Recent events further sharpen this contrast. The US stands alone among nations in providing unconditional support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which have been characterized as genocide by international legal experts and human rights organizations. The US has voted against UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire six times — the only country to do so. Additionally, US officials have publicly attacked international institutions including the UN and ICC for condemning the actions of Israel. This pattern of behaviour fits the definition that international relations scholars use for a particular type of actor in the global system: a rogue state.

Hegemony through narrative

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony offers a powerful lens for understanding how narratives around China’s rise are constructed in the US. It reveals how power is sustained not only through economic and military dominance, but through control over what is presented as “common sense.” By framing China as an existential threat, US elites and mainstream media outlets reproduce a worldview that legitimises American primacy while suppressing critical self-reflection and dismissing critics as “China hacks” or “CCP shills.”

And in those rare instances when a space for critical examination opens up, it is expected to be accompanied by a litany of caveats citing all the things that are wrong with China — its political system, social policies, or human rights record.

The double standards at play expose not a principled defence of “global order” but a defence of hierarchy, with the US at its apex. The patterns examined in this essay suggest that much of the current discourse is less about defending universal principles of “global order” than about preserving a particular hierarchy. When China pursues state-led development, it’s characterised as unfair competition; when it seeks technological self-sufficiency, it’s framed as aggression; when it expands its global economic presence, it’s depicted as domination. Yet these are precisely the strategies that virtually every successful industrialised country has employed.

The reflexive demonisation of China serves to normalise American exceptionalism, making it appear neutral, inevitable, and righteous. Gramsci reminds us that these narratives are neither natural nor inevitable — they are constructed, contested, and can be changed.