[refenestrator]

Cite? Do you have a quote from "China" on this?

I think Xi is quite clear on his view of China's place in the world: hegemon in their region but no desire to be global police like America.

[rsynnott]

The CCP is quite unlikely to come out with a quote that they're cracking down because they feel insecure in their position. Very unusual for any regime to admit that. But it seems the most obvious reading of the situation.

> I think Xi is quite clear on his view of China's place in the world

Yes, Xi may have a view. Again, the problem for the regime, and presumably the reason for Xi's crackdowns, is that China, as in the population, is less clear on its view of Xi's place in China.

[thebooktocome]

I will be pleasantly amused if China's imperial aspirations actually stop at Taiwan. It would be so tempting to turn the Belt and Road into an invasion route.

[justicezyx]

> I will be pleasantly amused if China's imperial aspirations actually stop at Taiwan

For a Western person, with the implicit cultural and historical ethos, and the actual modern history, it's natural to apply aggressive stance to a rising power.

For a Chinese who had the same kind of knowledge from the Chinese heritage, it's laughable to expand. China in the Han dynasty, already figured out that expansion just results into stretch of power and evetual breakdown, which is natural for any complex system. So that's what happened after Wu Di the second great emperor after Shi Huang, he realized his military expansion in the end does not achieve it's strategic goal, I.e., extinguish the roaming noamd tribes from the earth. He even wrote a self criticizing official doc to confess. And changed the policy to use economic and royal marriage to manage the nomad tribes.

You can equate the cultural and economic management as expansion, just like what US did in 20 century. But that's inevitable anyway. I.e., culturally and economically advanced nations are mimicked by others even if they are not doing anything...

[jessaustin]

This is projection. Just because our rulers would do it, and our idiotic war media would find some "humanitarian" fig leaf to justify it, doesn't mean that all, or even median, humans would.

[refenestrator]

Invade where? Tajikistan? The thing about belt and road is.. we could do that, too. Instead we blow a fortune in the middle east and get salty at them for being smarter.

As far as china's ambitions go, anything can change but they have a long, long history of non-interventionism. It's hard to justify ideologically when they teach every schoolkid about the century of humiliation and the evils of colonialism.