'The China Syndrome' Imagining Western Decline in the Age of 'The Rise of China'

This paper explores the persistent association between China and the apocalypse in Western political thought. Using the 1979 film The China Syndrome as a starting point, it examines how China is depicted as the specter of global catastrophe: as a society unable to recover from its own nineteenth-century collapse, and the post-apocalyptic form assumed by Europe itself. Through the writings of John Stuart Mill and Niall Ferguson, the paper highlights how the trope of "apocalyptic China" has evolved with shifts in global power, reflecting Western anxieties about its own decline and the perceived inevitability of China's rise.