The Great White Fleet warned more than Britain

Can the Great White Fleet offer a useful parallel for responding to China when the United States and Britain then had little ideological division?

Only if the voyage is understood as signaling to several powers, especially Germany and Japan, rather than as an American fleet aimed solely at Britain.

The voyage took place amid Germany's search for overseas influence and Japan's recent emergence as a major Pacific naval power. Germany might have seen conflict with the United States as a way to establish status without immediately confronting Britain, while Japan operated in the Pacific area of direct American concern. Both could challenge American interests without the Great White Fleet being designed around a single prospective enemy. Britain still mattered to the strategic calculation, but treating it as the sole audience obscures the wider signaling problem. The itinerary supplies the telling comparison: the American fleet visited Japan but not Germany, while the later British Empire Cruise visited the United States but not Japan. Reading the port calls alongside contemporary rivalries turns the route itself into evidence about naval diplomacy.