Belt and road is just them being smart.

We ran the Marshall plan once upon a time, now we just spend our fortune fighting wars in backwaters.

You're gonna hate on the Chinese for doing the sort of things we should have been doing?

My comment wasn't about hating or not hating China. It was about western companies having rational economic concern over depending on companies and resources under China's control.

The belt and road project in particular was not supposed to raise any negative emotions about China at all, it was meant to demonstrate that China does have an interest in expanding it's economic power, as indicated in my original comment.

To the extent that I raised moral issues with China (that was the part about concentration camps) the point was that we should expect them to not use this economic power based on some sort of principle of fairness.

I'd also be careful with the use of the word Chinese, since it applies both to the country and to the people. The vast majority of Chinese people are perfectly nice normal people, just like every other large ethnic group really.

The vast majority of Chinese are wholly in support of their government and of their country being great the same way as the vast majority of Americans are wholly in support of ours. And they're apologists the same way we are.

As far as China/Chinese, we're the exception in terms of not being an ethnostate. France, Ireland, Israel.. the west is full of them. It's mostly just the places that the west carved up that aren't ethnostates.

Personally, I'm not in favor of anthropomorphizing nation-states, I think it obscures the fact that people and politics are behind everything.

When you're placing words in my mouth, like you did before, I'd appreciate if you kept the distinction intact regardless of how you feel.

As for supporting them, in the abstract sense of "their ours" and in which I support the leafs (terrible hockey team that people from Toronto feel obliged to support), probably so. That doesn't mean that the people (especially in China) are responsible for the governments actions, that they would do the same thing given a choice, that I feel the same towards the two entities, etc.

If you're not in favor of anthropomorhpizing nation states translate "China's actions" to "The current Chinese government's actions" and not "The general population of China's actions"

France isn't an ethnostate. Like the US, France has jus soli, and the the country very much cultivates the idea of allegiance to the Republic and its ideals being the primary aspect of Frenchness. The National Front might want to change that, but French identity is a kind of civic religion.

The Chinese economy is not nearly as protectionist as you're making it out to be, and it has seen maybe opening up over the past few decades. Foreign companies have a huge presence in China. Apple phones and computers, European and American cars, American fast-food restaurants and Starbucks, and Western fashion brands are everywhere. Restrictions like joint-venture requirements have been successively removed from ever more industries (for example, they were removed in the automobile industry last year), and tariffs have been reduced to negligible levels for most products. China has censorship, which is why Google and Facebook aren't available in the country, but Apple goes along with the censorship and is not only available but also very popular.

The argument that poorer countries need a certain level of protectionism in order to develop isn't new (it goes back at least to Alexander Hamilton), but as China has developed, it has reduced barriers to entry for foreign firms. There's a wide gulf between how China is discussed in the United States and the reality.