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China’s rise has garnered a significant amount of attention within academic and policy circles over the last several decades. Many in the West have become wary of China and its growth and feel that a very real ‘China threat’ has emerged. To this group such a threat has cast a pall over China’s relations with its neighbours, the West, and most significantly with the United States. Because of its prevalence it is rarely acknowledged that the China threat is but one perception of China among many others. This thesis seeks to understand how the China threat has become established in Western views of China. The primary goal of this study is to understand how China has been positioned as an antagonist to the United States in particular. Orthodox IR approaches tend to utilize positivist notions of causality to explain why China’s rise poses a threat to the West. This thesis, however, challenges these positivist assumptions and demonstrates the utility of poststructuralism in examining how China has been constructed as a challenger to US interests rather than why its rise poses a threat. In order to eschew notions of China as posing an a priori threat to the US, rationalist assumptions of causality are dismissed in favour of postpositivist emphasis on discursive constructions. Poststructural discourse analysis is employed to examine the intertextual and discursive relationship between two basic discourses, the China Threat Discourse and the Energy Security Discourse. This thesis uses the case study of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s (CNOOC) failed 2005 bid for California’s Unocal Corp. to show how the intertextual relationship between the basic discourses helps to position China as a threat to US interests. The thesis examines official and non-official US discourse to demonstrate how poststructural discourse analysis is instrumental in exposing the construction of China as a threat to the US.

This thesis combines both a theoretical and empirical examination of neoliberal institutional theory to explore Sino-American cooperation and competition. It does so through looking at a number of multilateral political and security institutions. The theoretical analysis contains two aspects: first, this study explores institutional theory and its perspectives on cooperation.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the impact of the US Congress on the process of Sino-American rapprochement and diplomatic normalisation during the period 1969-1980. Thus far, research on Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation has focused on the role played by the Executive Branch, ignoring the role played by Congress. This study aims to place Executive Branch actions with regard to China policy in the context of domestic political trends and Congressional actions and attitudes, and locates the process of Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation in the broader context of shifting domestic attitudes toward the Cold War. This thesis demonstrates that rapprochement would not have been possible in the absence of dramatic domestic political changes in the United States, particularly important shifts of perspective within Congress toward the Cold War in general and China in particular. It traces the development of Congressional attitudes towards China, and examines the interaction between Congress and the Executive Branch with regard to China policy. This study argues that the interplay between the Executive and the Legislative Branches during a decade in which Congress was asserting its views on foreign policy is central to understanding the development of China policy during the 1970's. One of the most effective means by which Congress shaped China policy during the period of this study was by means of its ability to define the political space within which the Executive Branch was able to operate with respect to China policy. Attempts on the part of the Executive Branch to deny Congress influence were only partially successful, and although there were limits on Congress's ability to directly influence policy in the 1970's, this thesis demonstrates that Congress had a much greater impact on the development of China policy during the decade than has previously been acknowledged.