On the evening of April 22, 2024, the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), Peking University (PKU) held the 74^th North Pavilion Seminar series lectures. Prof. Peter Trubowitz, Director of the Phelan U.S. Centre and Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, gave a lecture titled “U.S.-China Relations: Tracking Threat Perception over Time” and interacted with the audience. The lecture was hosted by Prof. Yu Tiejun, President of IISS, PKU. Associate Professor Jie Dalei, senior research fellow at the School of International Studies (SIS), PKU, attended the event.

Prof. Trubowitz first introduced his team's construction of an index model based on news reports and other information sources to measure the baseline of the U.S. Geopolitical Threat Index (GTI) from 1861 to 2017 and explained the data fluctuations corresponding to major historical events. On this basis, he presented the trend charts depicting U.S. threat perceptions of China from 1977 to 2023, as well as its threat perceptions of different countries (Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Iran, Russia) from 1998 to 2023. He summarized the phased characteristics of U.S. threat perceptions of China and analyzed the reasons why they differ from those of other countries.

Prof. Trubowitz then presented the visual results depicting the threat perceptions between China and the United States from 1998 to 2023, and analyzed the correlation between these two sets of data. He also compared visualized data on U.S. threat perceptions of China in the security and economic fields from 1977 to 2023, showing that the U.S. prioritizes economic threats over security threats. Finally, he argued that structural factors at both the international and domestic levels led to the current deterioration in U.S.-China relations, and it would be meaningful for both sides to alleviate the relation.

In the Q&A session, Prof. Trubowitz discussed with the audience on issues such as the authority of data sources, the definition of threat perception, the process of indicator generation, and data processing. (Content contributor: Lu Chang)

Editor: Li Fangqi Photographer: Zheng Peijie