Oh my God listen to yourself for just a second, will ya. Do you know what oppression of ethnic groups looks like? It looks like public lynchings of Italians. It looks like building ghettos for the Jews. It looks like constantly crowing about immigrants. That’s the US, not China.

Do you know what oppressing occupied territories looks like? It looks like child separation policies. It looks like laws making languages illegal and assimilation mandatory. It looks like eugenics and forced sterilization programs. That’s the US, not China.

Do you know what bullying looks like? It looks like killing fisherman by bombing them with your military. It looks like blowing up medical buildings and cultural sites while kidnapping a head of state. It looks like collective punishment killing millions of people every single year. That’s the US, not China.

China’s bullying the SCS is placid not beligerent. That should be obvious. They have never double tapped a fishing vessel.

China’s “occupation” of Tibet is anything but. The Tibetan people have always been autonomous under Chinese protection since the days the Chinese liberated them from the Mongols. Their education system teaches in the Tibetan language. Their government operates in the Tibetan language. Their culture is openly expressed and celebrated constantly. In the US, indigenous children were being separated from their families and sent to assimilation schools where they were murdered, beaten, raped, and tortured and that was occuring in the 1980s! Child separation is still a US program but now it’s managed through child protective services and the adoption system. The US is the example of what oppression looks like and you won’t find any of that in China.

Xinjiang situation is even more damning. Terrorist attacks in Xinjiang were rising every year for at least a decade. You know what they US does when there are terrorist attacks, right? It bombs multiple countries and ignores white supremacist attacks on Muslim populations. You know what China did? It invested in infrastructure, education, and industry while launching an anti-terrorism campaign that balanced fighting US-backed proxies with reintegrating terrorists into society. Representatives from over 20 countries have been on the ground observing the program. The results are very clear. The terrorist attacks have been almost eliminated, while the cultural expression of the peoples of Xinjiang remains vibrant. The region has been autonomous for decades. Like Tibet, it ran its government in its own language. It organized its society around its own historical practices. It was never subject to child separation, eugenics, or assimilation.

What you are describing as Chinese oppression is a projection of Western settler colonialism onto the Chinese reality. It is an illusion. Take for example your last sentence. The BRI has been accused of being neo-colonialism. That’s true, it has been accused of that. By whom though? Predominantly Western accusers and those aligned with the West. There are breaks in the ranks though. The Atlantic has a great essay explaining that the idea of the Chinese debt trap is a total fabrication. The Atlantic is a known imperial rag, and even it ran this article.

So yes, China has been accused of neocolonialism by neocolonialists. But it’s not doing neocolonialism in Africa.

As for the long history of Chinese imperialism dating back over 2000 years, I don’t think anyone could argue with that. Taiwan is a settler colony of the Han Chinese. The indigenous people of the island, however, are not the people being supported by the West. I doubt most Westerners who support Taiwan independence even know that there is an indigenous nation on the island separate from the Han.

But the reality is that under the CPC, China has not dropped a bomb in over 30 years. It has maintained and defended the autonomy of its protectorate. And it has been an active force of anti-imperialism and is one of the primary anchors of anti-imperialism today. There is only one empire ruling the globe right now. They have 600 military bases around the world. They have military fleets on every continent. They bomb weddings, funerals, medical facilities, and they have proxy programs that do this for them. They spend millions on individual propaganda campaigns like the anti-vax campaign in Asia aimed at making people afraid of China’s COVID vaccine. Their sanctions regime has killed over 40 million people globally. They have destroyed a dozen countries, developed large networks of drug production and distribution that kill millions every year. There is but one empire, and it is the US at the helm, with the rest of white supremacist Europe and the former and current colonies as junior partners.

We can worry about unwinding the contradictions of millenia of Han imperialism when the empire is defanged.