Blue Team (U.S. politics)

The Blue Team is an informal term for a group of politicians and journalists in United States loosely unified by their belief that the People's Republic of China is a significant security threat to the United States. Though allied on some issues with Democratic advocates of labor, most of those to whom the term has been applied are conservative or neoconservative. However, few occupied positions of high power within the Bush administration, instead tending to work for the Pentagon, US intelligence services, and private think tanks and journalists.

The name comes from the color representing US forces in war games, in contrast to the red that represents the American opponent. It was coined by William Triplett, former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He meant to describe a divergence arising originally from changing Sino-American relations, particularly as regards the political status of Taiwan. After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and in the context of China's economic expansion, "blue" concerns widened in scope. They worried about China's military and diplomatic ambitions not only in Asia but around the world; they worried about China's protectionist economic policies; most immediately, they worried about the tendency toward accommodation of China by many people in the US government, the unprecedented influence China has on the US economy, and the movement of American investments and industry to China.

Though now applied primarily to Republicans, the terms refers to concerns not tied to a single party or perspective. Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 against George H. W. Bush's supposed laxness toward China, but while in office uncoupled economic integration with democratic reform in China. Though the Republican platform in 2000 criticized Clinton's treatment of China, George W. Bush did not fully embrace the "blue" interpretation of China's aims, nor did he reverse Clinton's policy of constructive engagement.

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