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A bit of a nitpick I know but the CCP is not bent on world domination. They want the South China Sea islands and Taiwan but they don't want the network of bases and patronage world domination would require. Iran has a much more extensive list of allies, proxies and bases then China does on a paltry budget. If China wanted the type of influence the Soviets had they could have it but they don't. They are happy to sit in China* and make money. For example A see the Syrian civil war.
*That being their definition of China of course.
People are increasingly realizing they cannot sit in China and keep making money without major disruptions. See Iran, Netherlands (Nexperia), Venezuela, and Panama for example. The inertia is strong (the propaganda of China as peaceful and non-expansionist runs deep but it’s delusional, Chinese empires have historically expanded to the maximum extent permitted by technology, chiefly the military technology and information technology required to maintain hierarchical bureaucracy). I doubt the non-expansionism can stay mainstream for much longer as the country’s power keeps growing.
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I've yet to read a convincing argument for why China or the Chinese people are incapable of building an imposing global empire. It has not happened yet, which is a good reason to believe China is not currently in possession of an empire with specific qualities. Empires aren't built in a day! I would like to know the essentialist reasons why China is limited in this way due to immutable characteristics, culture, geography, etc.
Most of the Western perspective I read on this boils down to:
America also tends to avoid direct control in most of its imperial relationships and, as @Tanista wrote, was also once disinterested in far away interests. I can buy that the CPC today is not interested in certain ideological impositions as something like liberalism in the 20th century. I'm less sure this is something to bet the future on. The CPC is young and young upstarts tend to create ambitious men that shape new understandings. Romanize, Anglicize, Liberalize-- all verbs developed during a process of expansion. The broader understanding of Sinicization as limited to an economic context similarly feels overstated to me, and maybe just wrong.
Are the constraints that helped shaped a Sinocentric understanding, material or otherwise, a thousand years ago the same as today or tomorrow? Also, is it really the case that the European psyche is, in fact, the only type on Earth prone to use something understood as unpleasant coercion in a global or imperial context? I doubt this, but maybe there's a good reason to believe it. To me, ambition, inertia, and the largest navy in the world all seem like very powerful things to bet against, to assume a kind of ceiling in ambition to shape the world based on cultural vibes, history, geopolitics, or what have you.
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I've always found it an irrelevant point. At one point you could also say that the US didn't want to get involved in the world domination business and wanted to just make money and control its near abroad.
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