The initial allegations came from a Western-funded NGO report and were then amplified across U.S.-aligned media and political channels(Radio Free Asia). Official investigations did not substantiate claims of criminal law-enforcement activity. For example, authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada stated they found no evidence of illegal policing operations, though concerns were raised about registration and transparency.

So not really a good reason to believe some nefarious global intimidation ring. You should probably read things before you link them.

You’re still not engaging the substance.

Feudalism is a defined mode of production. It refers to specific property relations and hierarchical organization of society. The church was historically important in Europe, but it is not what defines feudalism. The defining feature is the structure of land ownership and obligations. The same applies here.

Imperialism, is not a synonym for “large country acting assertively” or “foreign policy I dislike.” It refers to a specific configuration of global political economy: monopoly capital, dominance of finance capital, export of capital for superprofits, division of markets, and coercive enforcement of unequal exchange. If you strip those structural elements away and use the term to mean “big state behavior,” the concept becomes analytically useless. It stops explaining anything.

You object to the definition but refuse to provide a coherent alternative. If you think the term should mean something else, define it clearly and demonstrate how China fits that definition and how it has meaningful value as an analysis tool. “Different imperial strategy” is not an argument.

On social transformation, dismissing China’s development as “not special” is evasion. The PRC began from conditions that included mass illiteracy, extreme rural poverty, war devastation, landlordism, widespread arranged marriage practices, and remnants of practices like foot binding within living memory. It was one of the poorest large countries on earth. Within a few generations it eradicated extreme poverty, built nationwide high-speed rail, electrified rural areas, massively expanded higher education, massively expanded women’s and LGBT+ rights and raised life expectancy by decades. That scale and speed of transformation is historically unheard of especially when coupled with not pillaging the third world to finance it. Flattening that into “every country follows global trends” avoids engaging the material record.

On your anecdote about rich, well-connected Chinese kids: that proves nothing about the structure of the system. Every large society has contradictions. The existence of wealthy individuals does not determine mode of production. What matters is whether private capital structurally dominates the state and the commanding heights of the economy.

I am a minority Chinese citizen originally from a rural village. I have firsthand experience of the countryside you are theorizing about from a distance. I also hold a master’s degree in Marxist theory. Wealthy diaspora anecdotes do not outweigh structural analysis or lived reality. Before asserting conclusions about an entire political economy, it would be worth engaging with its institutional structure rather than relying on social impressions.

Land in China is publicly owned. The banks are state-owned. Core sectors (energy, telecoms, rail, defense, heavy industry )are state enterprises. Planning institutions shape capital allocation. When private firms grow politically destabilizing, the state has shown it will discipline them. That is materially different from systems where finance capital disciplines the state.

You’re correct that macro and micro interact. That is precisely the point. If the internal system subordinates capital to state planning and national development goals, external behavior will reflect that structure. China’s international conduct: trade integration, infrastructure financing, debt renegotiation, absence of regime-change wars, follows from its internal political economy. It prioritizes development partnerships over military enforcement.

None of this means the system is perfect. It means it does not structurally match the definition of imperialism as a stage of monopoly capitalism enforced through global military dominance.

If you want to argue that it does, demonstrate the mechanisms. Identify the finance capital dominance, the coercive capital-export regime, the military enforcement of unequal exchange. Without that, you are asserting a label without meeting its criteria.

Precision is not dogma. It is the difference between analysis and rhetoric. And you are firmly in the rhetoric category for now.

You are mixing together several different issues that need to be separated.

First, empires and imperialism are not the same thing. The Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire were empires. They expanded territorially through conquest. That tells us something about pre-capitalist state formation. It does not tell us much about how 19th–20th century industrial powers behaved once finance capital, monopoly capital, and global markets became dominant.

Using “imperialism” in the useful sense is not a dodge. It is an analytical category developed to explain a specific historical phenomenon: why advanced capitalist states began exporting capital, carving up colonies, enforcing unequal trade structures, and using military power to secure superprofits abroad. If a concept is meant to explain a modern phase of capitalism, applying it to Rome is a category error. We already have words for territorial conquest, war, annexation, and domination. Not every bad or aggressive action needs to be labeled “imperialism” to be condemnable. Just as not every atrocity is genocide, even though both can be severe crimes.

Second, on whether China’s development is rooted in socialist foundations: this is not a matter of faith but of historical sequence and institutional structure. The PRC began with massive land reform under Mao, eliminating landlordism and breaking the pre-1949 semi-feudal structure. That radically altered property relations in the countryside. It built universal basic healthcare, literacy campaigns, and heavy industry from an extremely impoverished base. When reform and opening began, it did so from a position where land remained collectively owned and the commanding heights of the economy were state controlled (the apparatus through which the people exert their power).

Today, state-owned enterprises dominate strategic sectors: energy, banking, telecommunications, transport, defense, and heavy industry. The largest and most systemically important firms remain under party-state control. Finance is not privately sovereign in the way it is in Western economies; it is subordinated to planning priorities. Poverty alleviation on the scale China achieved (lifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty within decades), large-scale infrastructure coordination, and sustained anti-corruption campaigns targeting high-ranking officials are not typical outcomes in liberal capitalist states where capital structurally dominates the state. You can criticize implementation or inequality levels, but the development trajectory is not reducible to “normal capitalism with a flag.”

On social questions, sweeping claims about uniform repression do not reflect reality. China is not socially homogeneous. Urban centers like Shanghai have gender-affirming clinics operating openly. Chengdu has a visible and active queer scene. Ethnic minority regions have received significant state investment in infrastructure, education, and poverty relief; minorities were exempted from the one-child policy for decades. That does not mean no problems exist. It means the picture is more complex than “reactionary uniformity.”

China also began from a far poorer, more backward and much more recent starting point in the modern age than most contemporary developed countries. The speed and scale of industrialization, poverty reduction and social progress in roughly four decades have few to no historical parallels. None of this implies perfection. A socialist transition in a large, unevenly developed country integrated into the global market will contain contradictions: inequality, bureaucratic distortion, market pressures, ideological struggle. Expecting a frictionless transition misunderstands the theory itself. Socialism is not a moral condition achieved overnight; it is a protracted restructuring of property relations, production, and global positioning under difficult constraints.

Finally, rejecting dogma cuts both ways. Treating “all rising powers inevitably replicate imperialism” as a fixed truth is also a form of ideological closure. The question should remain empirical: what are the property relations? Who controls finance? Is capital subordinated to political planning or vice versa? Is global expansion enforced militarily for superprofits, or is integration primarily commercial?

China can be criticized where warranted. But critique should rest on material analysis, not analogy or inherited narratives. Edit: fixed formatting

“What are we a bunch of Asians/Russians”

This is literally the most USAmerican thing to happen.

Bombing civilians in the middle east has been the Epstein Coalitions favourite pass time for literal decades.

Apologies in advance for the length of this.

To start, there is no modern Chinese “empire” in the way there is a U.S.-led Western empire.

The United States maintains hundreds of overseas military bases, a globe-spanning alliance architecture (NATO, bilateral defense treaties in East Asia, Five Eyes intelligence integration), permanent carrier strike group deployments, and an expansive sanctions regime. Since 1945 it has engaged in invasions, coups, proxy wars, destabilization campaigns, and support for armed non-state actors in dozens of countries, including in China during the civil war and later through toleration or political maneuvering around groups such as ETIM, which carried out violent attacks in Xinjiang and neighboring states. That is what empire looks like in material terms: global force projection combined with economic and financial enforcement mechanisms.

China does not possess that structure. It has one acknowledged overseas support base in Djibouti, no global military bloc, no equivalent to NATO, no record of regime-change wars abroad in the PRC era, and no network of foreign occupations. Those are not minor differences.

Framing China as “not as bad as the world police” implies rough comparability. That comparison does not hold up under scrutiny. The “world police” has:

– Invaded or bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia and others.(Been at war for all but roughly 15 years of its existence)

– Sponsored coups and destabilization efforts across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.(Pinochet, Banana republic, assassination of Sankara and Lumumba)

– Imposed sanctions regimes that function as collective punishment.

– Used IMF and World Bank leverage to enforce structural adjustment: privatization, subsidy removal, austerity, capital liberalization.

By contrast, China’s external engagement since reform and opening has centered on trade, infrastructure financing, and industrial development partnerships. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, it has financed ports, rail, energy grids, and industrial corridors across the Global South. Loans have frequently been renegotiated, extended, or partially forgiven. There is no systematic Chinese analogue to IMF-style conditionality requiring privatization or austerity as a precondition for assistance.

On the claim that China is “harsher in its sphere of influence”: China has not fought a major war in nearly fifty years. The 1979 conflict with Vietnam lasted roughly one month and is widely regarded ( including within China ) as costly and strategically flawed. Since then, border disputes (including with India) have involved standoffs and limited clashes, not prolonged invasions or occupations. Border tensions are common globally; they are not equivalent to imperial expansion.

It is also necessary to define imperialism clearly. In the classical sense that has any actual use, imperialism is not simply “a powerful country acting assertively.” It is a specific stage of capitalism characterized by the dominance of finance capital, export of capital for superprofits, division of the world among monopolies, and enforcement of unequal exchange backed by military power.

The Chinese system is a socialist market economy: a mixed structure where strategic sectors (finance, energy, infrastructure, land, and slightly over 70% of the largest companies) remain publicly owned and capital is subordinated to long-term national development planning. One can debate how early into the socialist transition army period it is, but it is fundamentally not organized around the same model of private finance capital dominating the state and projecting power abroad to secure superprofits. There is no evidence of systematic coercive debt seizures, gunboat enforcement of contracts, or military intervention to secure overseas capital flows.

Every state pursues national development, energy security, technological advancement, and geopolitical stability favorable to its interests. The relevant question is how those interests are pursued. The empirical record shows that China’s rise has primarily taken the form of trade integration and infrastructure investment, not regime-change wars or structural adjustment regimes imposed at gunpoint.

At present, there is one consolidated imperial bloc with global military reach, integrated finance capital, and sanction power across continents: the U.S.-led Euro-American alliance system. Other powers may have regional ambitions or security concerns, but they do not currently possess the structural capacity to organize and police the world economy in that way.(Russia is a big one as a relatively new capitalist power).

The assumption that any rising power must replicate the existing hegemon is an assumption. It is not evidence. If someone wants to argue that China is imperialist in the classical sense, the burden is to demonstrate the mechanisms, enforced unequal exchange, capital export backed by military coercion, territorial division through force.

You seem nominally leftist, you would probably benefit from deconstructing your foundation of “common sense” when it comes to political economy especially if you live in the imperial core. Ask why you believe things and trace it all back. I’m sure some will still make sense but a lot will be from immersion and osmosis of imperial narratives from constant propaganda bombardment.

Edit: As I was typing this the US empire launched a preemptive strike on Iran hitting a girls elementary school killing over 40 students alongside strikes on downtown Tehran. Death to America.

That’s a Wikipedia article that cites Radio Free Asia, The US Government and western funded think tanks. I would call that about as trustworthy as you would call DPRK state media. Also I didn’t ask you.

Do I believe China is engaging in a campaign of global intimidation? Heck, I’d be more surprised if they weren’t.

Why do you believe this?

What evidence? It’s just a claim from a CEO with every incentive to lie.

You are continuing to just engage in bad faith. All the best.

Edit: nice edit over an hour later btw lmao. You really dug far into my profile lol.

Tankie is when you’re Chinese apparently.

It’s just not believable that they’d be using chatgpt in government over the Chinese alternatives. I very much believe their probably are people using/abusing chatbots for dumb stuff. But this specific story given the details and time it’s “come to light” is just so obviously fabrication for altman to show what a good boy he is and pushing his bot for American defence contracts.

Your original comment was a clear badfaith strawman.

Holy strawman.

This is a high level conspiracy between multiple parties to make one Chinese official look dumb,

No it’s a standard propoganda run, run through the most standard propaganda mouthpiece (RFA) to spread propaganda about China? Are you being dense on purpose?

USSR kickstarted German conquests allying with them at the start of WW2

Ah you’re one of these people. Ok conversation with you will not be productive. Continue believing what you want all the best.

Syria? The country currently controlled by terrorists massacring minorities is a good example of what you want? Also the USSR did 90% of the work of defeating the Nazis while America continued to trade with and fund them through ford IBM and other enterprises. I think the US should just stop intervening but they never will as the massive violence and immiseration is necessary to sustain their empire.

People said the exact same thing about Libya in 2011. ‘Just military targets.’ ‘Just a no-fly zone.’ It’s genuinely impressive how the same script can be rolled out over and over.

What it actually meant was destroying Libya’s air defenses and command systems. Once that was done, NATO pushed regime change, the state collapsed, and the country was handed over to militias, foreign powers, and jihadist groups. That’s the model.

When people say ‘only military targets,’ they’re repeating the same script. You don’t bomb a country’s defenses unless your goal is to weaken it. Once that happens, it’s open season: invasion, proxy forces, destabilization. These strikes are never isolated. They’re step one.

Left of centre

The guardian.

I’m not sure you know what it means to be left of centre.

Not to be mean, but I think you’re approaching this from a place of pretty immense privilege, where it’s possible to sidestep the fact that the “stability” and social care you’re talking about are materially predicated on the largest, most advanced, and most comprehensive immiseration machine in human history, currently headed by the US and enforced by its hunting dogs.

I understand what you’re saying about intent, but I think you’re putting far too much weight on intent and far too little on material outcomes. From the perspective of people in the periphery, whether harm is done out of malice, fear, or ignorance doesn’t change the harm itself. The status quo imposed by the imperial core is anything but neutral; it is actively sustained through extraction, coercion, and violence, regardless of how polite or well-meaning its defenders may be.

The claim that Liberal voters “aren’t thinking about” neocolonialism doesn’t really mitigate anything. Apathy and ignorance aren’t accidental flaws of the system, they’re systematically reinforced. Liberal politics trains people to narrow their moral horizon to national borders and to treat global suffering as unfortunate but external. Wanting stability at home while refusing to interrogate how that stability is financed is still a political choice, even if it feels passive or unavoidable.

I’m about to make an inflammatory comparison, and before it’s taken the wrong way I want to be clear that I’m not calling you, or Liberal voters, Nazis of any kind.

What I’m pointing to is a similar moral logic to the “clean Wehrmacht,” but applied to liberalism: the idea that all the real harm belongs to the obvious villains, while those who uphold the same system in a more moderate, respectable way are merely ignorant, apolitical, or trying their best. That framing launders responsibility. It treats liberal participation as an unfortunate accident rather than a core function.

From the standpoint of those who live with the consequences of your stability, calling it “misguided but not bad” reads as a refusal to take structural violence seriously.

I am talking about how the status quo of the entirety of the imperial core is built on and sustained by the pillaging and superxploitation of the periphery through imperialism and neocolonialism.

The status quo is bad if you view us of the periphery as equal humans whose suffering matters the same as you.

The results will be published by the same party that holds them imprisoned

That’s how being arrested works. The state detains you Investigates and then you are put on trial. What is your point with this?