You're beating around the bush. If you agree that hegemonic states engaging in imperialism isn't "special", why are you so resistant to the idea that China will behave that way once it has the opportunity? If you ask those in Tibet and Xinjiang they would argue that they already are.

You have a lively imagination with respect to what I hypothetically might intend to say. In fact, I only intended to record the oddity of your objection to thread parent [0]. Apparently we agree that large militarized states are a plague upon humanity. China is too large to see justice in governance, as USA is. However, it will have to change a great deal in twenty years in order to menace the world in the way that USA does. China might be our equal in terms of news and social media totally committed to fear and mistrust of other nations, but they fall far short in terms of a vast rent-seeking self-dealing industrial armaments sector. I'm not even sure that such a sector can arise in the sort of polity they have...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22311947