History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
At its most basic level, China’s geopolitical goals are to increase its influence, status, and power in the world. This is not a controversial claim. As one small piece of support for this I’ll offer up this quote from one of the Chinese ambassadors during their negotiations to enter the WTO: "We know we have to play the game your way now, but in ten years we will set the rules"
If you google that quote verbatim you will find many sources that deal with China’s short and long term goals in much more detail.
This basic goal is not, necessarily, completely zero sum, but neither can it be accomplished to any significant degree without displacing some of the power & influence that the Western powers have in the world. This unavoidably brings the various sides & interests powers into conflict.
It is all much, much more complicated than this but this is a significant pillar in the foundations of China’s goals that put it at odds with the West. This alone is a strong influence on the economic conflicts and spats that arise.
That’s about the best I can do in a forum like HN without simplifying the details more than I think may be useful for this conversation. For further sources, that quote really is the key to a lot of foreign policy analysis and well-sourced research on the topic. You may also want to do a few quick searches on China’s 2049 plan along with the 100 Years of Humiliation and its social/cultural influence on Chinas view towards the western world and its economical and technological goals to enable greater self sufficiency.
I’d link to more direct sources but it’s late and I’m tired, and honestly searching on the specific terms and topics I mentioned will give you more and better information than is easily conveyed here.
And God forbid a country outside the west hasn't been completely subjugated by it. Why exactly do you think China's goals aren't aligned with the West? Have you read anything about what imperialism was doing to China (and literally everywhere else on Earth not being settled by Europeans with few exceptions) during the 100 years of humiliation? Do you honestly expect a nation to take that in stride without retribution? I think a lot of younger folks like myself forget that colonialism was alive and well until around 50 years ago, which is the blink of an eye in the long-run.
Sure, you can point to Tibet and Xinjiang as signs of hypocrisy, but I counter: where did all the native americans go in the USA and canada? What was done by the Belgians in the Congo? What was done by the French in Indochina? At least the Uyghurs and Tibetans are actually still alive in large numbers of healthy individuals. Even in China, minorities get special treatment. For example, they were exempt from the One-Child Policy. I don't think there's any example of that in western nations. In the US, black people get the privilege of seeing their children murdered at the hands of the police for minor offenses and disobedience! :)
The war drums are beating and it's fascinating to see otherwise brilliant people fall victim to what is very clearly the propaganda being turned up to manufacture popular support for the genocide of billions under the name of "freedom", "democracy" and a "rules-based system". Let's do an exercise: which nuclear states have the weakest policies preventing the use of nuclear weapons? It's the United States, France, the UK, and Pakistan. Even Putin has stated multiple times on the record (even in late 2022) that Russia will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. India and China are strictly under a policy of no first-use.
Let's remember history: the United States is the only state to ever have used nuclear weapons to deliberately kill people. And remember doubly: those bombs were dropped for demonstration purposes, not out of necessity, even a USA general said so.
Clearly, greed and arrogance will be the downfall of Western imperialism. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, etc. are all de facto USA asian tributary states under USA hegemony, but nobody wants to acknowledge that.
I hope that in the coming 5 - 10 years once you have the luxury to bear witness to western militaries indiscriminately genociding billions of civilians in the name of "maintaining a rules based order" that you realize you cannot wash the blood from your hands.
Profiling and racism by police in America is obviously a problem. Unfortunately, we don't have a nuanced view of policing in China because any criticism of laws and policing by Chinese press is illegal because no freedom of press. The stories we do hear don't paint a rosy picture. A couple of examples are death sentences for drug crimes and organ harvesting.
To your point about "USA asian tributary states under USA hegemony". First, this sounds like Chinese propaganda. Let's assume you're right for the sake of argument. All of those countries you list have free or low-cost healthcare while American society pours money into weapons and military research. They don't pay the USA any kind of tax tribute that I'm aware of. Their economies have flourished and they have kept their own culture. They set their own laws and manage their own governments. It's not clear to me what we get out of the arrangement.
From my point of view, we are gearing up to defend Taiwan if necessary. That is all. I haven't heard anyone mention anything else in the press. Can you explain to me why defending a sovereign country that has existed as long as China would make us guilty of genocide?
You seem to question this claim and yet go on to provide significant support for why China has historical reasons for this. If you are interested, Read further down in the thread of another comment to my post that I responded to and you’ll see that I cover this a little more, but to reiterate a bit of it:
The Opium Wars and Ensuing 100 Years of Humiliation, despite any change to the governmental structure post-revolution, is still very much in the zeitgeist of China’s perception of the West. And China has taken that lesson to heart, in particular the lesson that: just a little technological superiority by an adversary can nonetheless allow a massive nation with significantly more resources but a lower industrial/technological base to be decisively subjugated to the will of a much smaller opponent.
This very much informs Chinas desire to increase it’s power and sphere of influence, along with advancing to the point that it is, at minimum, significantly more self sufficient at a similar level of technological advancement to the west, and preferably more so.
This unavoidably puts its geopolitical goals at odds with the West because this cannot be accomplished to a significant degree without disrupting at least a little bit the power and influence that the west (particularly USA) has in the world.
I am deliberately not bringing anything like forms of government, realpolitik games, moral judgements and human rights issues etc into my claim because those are all extremely complicated topics and muddy the water in addressing the very narrow and simple claim that China’s goals are not the same as the goals of western powers, and this necessarily results in conflicts and disagreements between these powers.
You and I probably disagree and other aspects of these issues, but from what you wrote I don’t thing we disagree on the claim that goals differ, and that is the source of many conflicts, and that this is true before bringing in any value judgements of which side is right/wrong/has the moral high ground/etc, which are separate (thought certainly intertwined) claims.
Finally, to address the dependency issue: a significant reason that countries are worried about over reliance on China is for the same reason people should be worried about having a single point of failure in any critical system.
That is, at a bare minimum, a serious problem that will take years to solve.
Now, bringing geopolitics back into things, China as a government does not have geopolitical goals that aligne with those of the western world. Without even placing value judgements on those goals, this fact alone is serious enough to warrant extreme caution in dealing with the Chinese government. Whether Western powers do bad things or China does bad things or both do or who is worse— those things are irrelevant on this point. The goals of each are incompatible and this will unavoidably cause each side(s) to come into conflict with each other.
These all leave aside any value judgements on government styles, human rights, etc. The issues above are all basic and fundamental problems and differences that should cause the west to be extremely cautious and skeptical of the surface appearance of any actions taken by the Chinese government. They are similarly wise to be cautious and skeptical on their side. This is simply the basic state of geopolitics, and acting in accordance with this state of affairs is not jingoism.
What we should hope for is to continue to work toward finding common ground at least in so far as the conflicts remain political, economic, etc. and not violent or militaristic. But you can’t engage in that sort of relationship if you keep your eyes closed to the true nature of, and differences between, the goals and values of the various players involved here.