It's neocolonialism when the interest of American companies are backed by the full force of the American government at the expense of the desires of the local people.

The scale is sliding though. On one side, you have countries which have had military force used against them for denying American companies favorable access to resources (Iraq, the Banana Republics of South America). On the other side, are countries who play ball be accepting American intellectual properties laws, don't interfere with American business interests, and make enough investments in America.

The people in those countries might not want to accept IP laws designed specifically to protect Mickey Mouse, but the alternative is economic arm twisting which is too much for most countries to handle. China is one of the few countries with enough power to stand up to the USA in this respect.

> It's neocolonialism when the interest of American companies are backed by the full force of the American government at the expense of the desires of the local people.

I don't mean to defend the US, but if you replacing "American" with "China" in that statement is basically the Chinese policy in a nutshell.

It's certainly seen as neo-colonialism, or at least exploitation, by some people. Here are a couple of examples of Australian protest songs about American economic and military expansion into our country:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tl1IvmJvel0

https://youtube.com/watch?v=anx_o43Y27Y

I think it's a question of scale (and the term has historical connotations as well obviously). I probably wouldn't call it neocolonialism but as a german citizen I do think that the less dependent on american companies we are, the better.