China and the U.S. are back in the headlines — but are investors paying sufficient attention to the risks of a geopolitical clash?

Indeed, caustic rhetoric between the No. 1 and 2 economies in the world is intensifying — again.

It may feel as if the animus between the global superpowers couldn’t come at a more inopportune time: in the middle of a pandemic, which notably was first identified in Wuhan, China in December, and has infected more than 5 million people around the world, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

As MarketWatch’s sister publication Barron’s writes, the Sino-American issues are many and include actions taken by the U.S. to censure China’s new security rules that threaten Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, restrictions against Huawei Technologies, a push to increase scrutiny of Chinese companies listed in the U.S., funding for the World Health Organization, and accountability for the handling of the viral outbreak that has likely ushered in one of the most severe global recessions in the past 100 years.