Because the fact that China has not engaged in non-local applications of violence, they must be better than the US? That seems to be an amazingly narrow standard, because by that measure any country which carries out atrocities on its own population is 'better' than the US. I understand, even if I may not agree, some individual's dislike of American foreign policy, but to equate America's actions in the last 20 years at a global level with a nation-state which is (according to press reports) imprisoning and potentially torturing and killing those of its own population who meet certain ethnic and demographic criteria seems absent any amount of perspective.

> Because the fact that China has not engaged in non-local applications of violence

Yet.

The PRC has been internationally relevant for a few decades. The US has been internationally relevant practically since its founding.

And for whatever reason, people don't think the PRC has continuity with pre-Mao China -- which has been internationally relevant since long before the US existed, and which doesn't have a very nice track record.

In this regard, this submission could be interesting:

Who Was Sun Tzu’s Napoleon? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22296312

>Millennia later, during the Second World War, Mao Zedong seized on this historical vignette to announce that the Chinese Communist forces would not abide by any political, military, or moral limitations in its fight against the Japanese, stating: “We are not Duke Xiang of Song and have no use for his asinine ethics.”

Belt and Road Initiative

Opium wars

Not the US

But close:

>Opium profits funded many leading Boston institutions. Thomas Perkins and a brother helped found Massachusetts General Hospital, left, and Perkins donated one of his homes for a new school that ...

https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-hi...