[8note]

why use 40 years as the example? its a pretty convenient framing to exclude the foreign governments its toppled. eg. tibet.

the government in exile remains the government in exile.

youd have some standing if china dropped control over its imperial holdings, rather than pretend theyre part of china

[statuslover9000]

First off, I consider the post-Mao / starting with Deng era of Chinese government to be the most relevant when considering who they “are” as a country now.

However, I’d still maintain that before that, China’s foreign policy was more focused on maintaining territorial sovereignty against the threat of Western imperialism vs. focused on expansion or foreign influence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_foreign_relations_o...

Meanwhile, the entire territory of the U.S. is predicated on one of history’s largest genocides, and a consistently expansionary foreign policy on top of that.