Who fears which great power? Symmetric and asymmetric threat perceptions in East Asia

Public threat perceptions in East Asia do not map neatly onto aggregate power or generalized rivalry sentiment, yet their cross-domain structure has received little systematic attention. This article examines how concerns across distinct issue domains are associated with perceived threats from China and the United States, distinguishing between symmetric domains, in which responsibility for managing a problem is plausibly shared by both powers, and asymmetric domains, in which responsibility is more closely tied to one. Using original cross-national survey data, we estimate seemingly unrelated regressions that jointly model the two threat outcomes. Concern about North Korea’s nuclear program is associated with higher perceived threat from both powers across Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, while climate concern shows a similar pattern in Japan and South Korea but not in Taiwan. By contrast, belief that COVID-19 was man-made is more strongly associated with China-threat perceptions, whereas dissatisfaction with Japan’s historical apologies is more closely linked to U.S.-threat perceptions in Japan and South Korea, with different substantive meanings in the two countries. The findings indicate that responsibility distributions across issue domains organize public threat perceptions and shape the domestic terrain of alignment politics under great-power rivalry.