> Going all the way back to the cultural revolution, China's goal was to unite the world under communism. They have been the antagonist from the start.

Why do you think this? Yes I know they're called the "Communist Party", but going from that to "unite the world under communism" is a big step.

Kishore Mahbubani, ex-UN Security Council head, ex-Singapore diplomat, says that China is communist in name only. In reality, the CCP is more like the "Chinese Civilization Party", Mahbubani said. Their goal is to advance the interests of China, not to promote world-wide communism. The opening-up since the 80s have been relentless. It's been going on for decades and they're still further opening up.

Why do you believe that their goal is to unite the world under communism?

I said their goal was to unite the world under communism, because it was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split

> In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the USSR's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western world, which Mao decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the West, and publicly rejected the USSR's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Eastern and Western blocs.

So that means they are no longer like that. Then it's not fair to say they "have been antagonist from the start", right? Imagine putting that same label on Japan because they were imperialist.

My point was, while they don't (openly) try to convert others to communism, China still sees America as the enemy and America sees China as the enemy. With good reason.

> Going all the way back to the cultural revolution, China's goal was to unite the world under communism. They have been the antagonist from the start.

Wrong and uninformed. They've not invaded another country since Vietnam in the 1979s, they're more interested in expanding their soft power. Also they haven't followed the communist ideology for a long time, abandoning it when Deng opened up China.

> America has a huge rap sheet of bad shit it's done, but at least in Western democracies we make (slow) progress towards being more moral and equitable societies. I'm convinced China goes the other direction.

In fact as a non-US observer I think the US has made negative progress on democracy thanks to Trump. Thanks to that China is now doubling down on its version of democracy.

> And tbh while I don't want a war with China, I don't think we should just accept their actions and move on.

Big powers will always get away with shit like this. When George Bush needed to get oil out of Iraq, he had to convince the UN security council that the war was not illegal. China helped them on this.