I don't think it's the American public that's blind about China but our elected goofballs, starting with Bill Clinton. Remember when Obama said that China was merely a partner and not a competitor? There was just too much money to be made, otherwise, and anyway, the U.S. was "democratizing" China by engaging with it economically, or so the dishonest argument went.
Most folks have always known that Red China is a threat to the U.S. but the corporate business class and political elites dismissed it, since they wanted access to all that cheap labor in unregulated factories. Now the ChiComs control about 80-90 of our supply chain, and the government is suddenly waking up? It's about 20 years too late.