> China isn't even in the same league when it comes to the harm of US hegemony.

No need to pick one or the other. There's plenty of hegemony from both to go around:

"The Communist Chinese invasion in 1950 led to years of turmoil, that culminated in the complete overthrow of the Tibetan Government and the self-imposed exile of the Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans in 1959.

Since that time over a million Tibetans have been killed. With the Chinese policy of resettlement of Chinese to Tibet, Tibetans have become a minority in their own country. Chinese is the official language. Compared to pre-1959 levels, only 1/20 monks are still allowed to practice, under the government's watch. Up to 6,000 monasteries and shrines have been destroyed. Famines have appeared for the first time in recorded history, natural resources are devastated, and wildlife depleted to extinction. Tibetan culture comes close to being eradicated there."

Source- http://www.umass.edu/rso/fretibet/education.html

I agree that China is horrible. There is one thing that separates China from the US though and that is that the US thinks the entire world should dance to its tune. The US will invade nations in distant continents, overthrow distant governments it doesn't like, kidnap people all over the world (extraordinary rendition), all while sitting on a horse so high it blocks out the sun.

China is a horrible state led by a despot, but it doesn't have a history of invading and killing anywhere beyond what it's historically claimed to be part of itself.

So to most of the world, the US has always been the greater threat.

> No need to pick one or the other. There's plenty of hegemony from both to go around

Indeed, there really is.

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

[couldn't copy and paste an excerpt because it's far too long]

Post WW2 there has never been a more peaceful era in history per capita.

There's still a lack of peace in some countries. The US should invade to slaughter the naughty people and anyone standing next to them in order to impose peace and prosperity in those places as well.

The analogy fails, because it’s more like projecting power as a beat cop who doesn’t always feel like risking their life going to every neighborhood, but on a whole, (from a utilitarian point of view), things are better off than they would be had the beat cop failed to exist prior.