This paper addresses the question of why some Americans hold negative attitudes toward China’s government and people, and the impact that such attitudes have on their preferred China policies. We hypothesized that the effects of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) on support for tougher (containment) policies towards China would be mediated through negative attitudes toward China’s government and its people. We found only weak evidence of a mediated effect between SDO and containment attitudes in Study 1 and no evidence of mediated effects on containment attitudes in Study 2. Our findings indicate that the effects of RWA and SDO on containment attitudes are direct and account for incremental variation in containment attitudes beyond the effects of negative attitudes towards China’s government and people.