Title Here The New Red Scare: When Fear

Becomes a Political Weapon

Subtitle subtitle More than seven decades later, the legacies of the Red Scare have resurfaced in the United States – this time targeting China.

By Qian He

February 01, 2025

Seventy-five years ago, in his February 1950 Wheeling speech, Senator Joseph McCarthy alleged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, posing a dire threat to U.S. national security. Although unsubstantiated, his bold claims ignited widespread fears of Soviet espionage within the U.S. government, ushering in an era of pervasive anti-communist hysteria.

McCarthy’s rhetoric, in essence, weaponized the country’s collective anxieties to garner fervent support from Americans already gripped by fears of communist subversion and betrayal. Meanwhile, it fueled ungrounded suspicion and distrust, fracturing workplaces, communities, families, and personal relationships under the long shadow of the Red Scare while setting the tone for the Cold War.

The China-U.S. Trade War and China Initiative

More than seven decades later, the legacies of the Red Scare have resurfaced in the United States with striking historical parallels, albeit this time targeting China – now the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S. – instead of the former Soviet Union. The official prelude to this renewed Red Scare was the first Donald Trump administration’s launch of the China-U.S. trade war in March 2018, citing national security concerns. That decision unleashed a tit-for-tat tariff battle between the two nations. In November 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) introduced its China Initiative, purportedly aimed at addressing potential economic espionage and intellectual property theft linked to the Chinese government.