I agree it's not going to end here, but I disagree on the reason. China doesn't rely on oil that much anymore as they have leaned heavily into nuclear and solar; further, Iran only provides about 12%.

Starve China of its oil?

Wouldn't Russia or Venezuela take up the slack.

yep sure, not starve, but every piece of containment helps

But if this happened, the price of oil would go up for everyone. As reducing supply increases demand for the remaining.

But none of that is necessary. Why is the US suddenly so hostile towards China?

I think because China has very high growth momentum that surpasses american living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass american security standards too. China purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most west countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why china's growth must be curbed, fast.

This is the biggest leopards ate my face moment. After decades of outsourcing to china and pandering to the chinese market for a quick buck, we are now surprised that they have become rich and decide their growth must be curbed. Honestly we in the west deserve everything that is coming to us

It makes sense as the people that got rich doing that and the people that are going to get screwed are definitely not the same.

If the West lets it happen, sure. Still seems like there is some amount of time to reverse course and stop handing the future to China if the West so desires.

But democracies these days can't help but tie themselves in knots, so not holding my breath.

I don't see how an answer that assumes hostility can be a helpful answer to why US to hostile. Would US also be equally hostile if France was surpassing US in all these ways?

Yes, they would. America is extremely insecure about not being number one and has a zero sum view of global politics.

Chinese growth spurt is basically over already. Gone are the days when their economy grew by 10 per cent y/y, nowadays it is under 5. Still a respectable number, but the trend is going down.

Yours is an interesting conspiracy theory, though. Most people would say that this war is obviously about Israel.

Because China started threatening war. It's not really sudden. It's from Xi coming to power and saying he'll take Taiwan.

Because the U.S. wants global hegemony and time is against the U.S. so there is a rush to crush China sooner rather than later.