Chinese "threat"?

Something that I’ve noticed more since this class started is that there is a lot of fear of China in this country. You see it a lot in blogs and from political pundits, and I’ve also noticed a lot of candidates trying to make political hay from the fear. The funny thing is that most of the arguments sound a lot like the fear of Japan as they were making economic inroads during the 1980’s, but no one seems afraid of Japan now. There was even a movie with back in the 80’s with Michael Keaton called “Gung Ho” that was about the Japanese coming here to take over and put Americans out of work.
Given the historical lack of hostility between the US and China, the Chinese “threat” to America seems a little overblown. I just wondered what everyone else thinks about this because it seems pretty irrational to me.