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Looks like I really struck a nerve. If you want to actually understand this, read the book I recommended. I won't be going through the last hundred years of history in this comment.
Americans don't hate the Chinese. In fact many of us quite like your culture and people and find much to admire. However, we cannot trust you. We can't trust you because when America came as a friend, China lied to us and betrayed us.
This seems like performative outrage. I know you must be aware that the CCP has a much higher level of control over Chinese businesses, especially state owned enterprises, than in America.
Again, not trying to argue with you. I want to explain why Americans have this perspective. If you really want to understand, read that book, or at least the LLM summary.
I don't think I implied that America was acting out of the goodness of their own hearts. I'm simply trying to point out why we are in conflict.
To get off the historical finger pointing, I do think the issue is ideological.
One of the main points of the book is that Chinese grand strategy is based off the lessons of the warring states period, of a lesser state rising up to supplant the hegemon. The strategies that China has used towards this goal are fundamentally deceptive. From what I've read, this is not unusual in Chinese thinking, to the point that Chinese people consider deception to be completely normal and expected practice in dealings between states. Maybe you can correct me on this, but it's certainly the conclusion reached by American thinkers on the topic.
The issue, then, is that American moral thinking sees deception as fundamentally wrong. Whether this comes from Judeo-Christian or Puritan values is not important. What matters is that Americans have an instinctive distaste for the way the Chinese state operates as a matter of course. When it comes to our relations with other nations, at least those we consider friends, those nations do not lie to us about their essential nature and goals with the intent of harming us. China does. Americans even prefer a nation like Russia that is open about its conflict with the West over a nation like China that pretends to be our friend while secretly undermining us, which in our moral calculus is considered the lowest of the low and a moral evil.
I appreciate your response! Again, the Warring States comparison is from the book I recommended. It describes the strategy taken by a lesser state to undermine and eventually supplant the greater, using tools like 'appear weaker than you are', 'exploit internal divisions in the enemy', 'control information' etc. We know that Chinese strategic thinkers base their thinking on this period because they write about it. What you have described as Confucianism vs Legalism is internal politics, whereas this is foreign affairs, two totally different things.
The other distinction I would draw is between the 'lies' of a politician and diplomatic subversion. All politicians lie, that has little to do with the relations between states. On the other hand, the US State Department operates on an extremely high level of trust. If a US diplomat were to deliberately deceive their counterpart from a friendly nation, that would be a serious breach of trust, a betrayal, that could badly damage relations between the two nations. Especially if the deception was in service of harming or undermining the other nation! Your example of the Iraq war only strengthens my point here - despite the fact that it wasn't even a deliberate deception (but instead bad intelligence about WMDs), this remains a point of contention and friction decades later. Now imagine if a country were conducting deceptions of this sort constantly and with malice - that's China.
I'll lastly just note that you haven't even tried to dispute the historical facts that lead American thinkers to this conclusion. Rather, it seems to me that you are passionately defending your country's honor, which I can certainly admire. But that sense of honor, and the passion it inspires, will prevent you from clearly seeing things from the outside perspective. Of course the Chinese see themselves as the hero of the story, just as everyone does, the Russians, the IRGC, everyone. That doesn't make it so.
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