• nekandro@lemmy.mlOP
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    10 months ago

    America seems to think that, just because they were the global hegemon, that any rising power also seeks hegemony by military power.

    Historically, this is supported by the post-Cold War context: the Warsaw Pact, NATO, and US enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine maintained American dominance in the West.

    But then, the USSR collapsed. It’s a new world, old man.

            • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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              10 months ago

              A lot of people focus on China’s actions in Africa as China being peaceful, but China has border disputes with most nations surrounding it, including adding more claims recently. It also has claims to the South China Sea that are well beyond any other kind of claims that other countries have. It also tends to treat a lot of those claims rather aggressively with its surrounding nations, trying to isolate each neighbor and use the size disparity to get a favorable agreement.

          • considine@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            I’ve followed the developing belt and road initiative and it works like this: China invests in various countries’ infrastructure to expand trade capacity. So far the only criticism the western media has leveled at it is that it is supposedly a debt trap. And the big evidence for that is Sri Lanka’s port. However, the majority of Sri Lankan debt is held by Western banks. The Chinese loan was not at a higher interest rate. Yet somehow, China is to blame? In what way do you consider the BRI to be a hegemonic project?

            • metaballism@slrpnk.net
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              10 months ago

              That’s a very naive take. Even if BRI was only meant for trade - so much influence on trade necessarily means that China will have greater political power over included countries. The debt trap thing is also true - the westerners noticed it because they employed the same tactics to gain influence over other countries. These are pretty hegemonic things to do.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Yes. They are Marxist, from their founding through today, with everyone from peasants to school children studying some of the most advanced political science developed to date. This understanding of the world concludes that global hegemony is unsustainable and leads to total social collapse. There are other ways to succeed that don’t inherently involve failure. China has no interest in failing in the exact same way Western Europe and the USA are failing. They have no interest in building an empire that will, by all analysis, collapse. They want to build something better, not equally terrible.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      It’s the projection of hegemonic capitalist imperialism, that can’t see things through any other lens than capitalist imperialism. It’s so hegemonic that even most of the non-wealthy see it this way, be they “conservative,” “liberal,” or even “ultra-leftist”.