Asking in good faith. Right now China is an emmerging power. It is clearly the better alternative for e.g. African countries right now and is certainly an adventageous power for these countries. China is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts though. They take the opportunity because it is also a win for them. But what happens once the world power dynamic shifts from the US block towards China? Is China not going to turn into a destructive imperialist country? Even if countries like Russia and China aren’t imperialist at the moment, they certainly might be in the future if they are more powerful? So does it make sense to unconditionally support them today?
I am asking this because I have heard this argument about China before and I would love to hear you guys debunk it.
Engaging with these hypotheticals is a waste of time. It’s like spending all day worrying about an extraterrestrial invasion or a meteor wiping out civilization. That’s just not the world we live in today, and though it is a possibility it is so remote at the moment that it’s not worth investing any effort into planning for the eventuality. We will deal with that situation if and when it happens but for now we should be focused on understanding the world as it is now, and acting according to the objective realities of the present and foreseeable future, not according to some fantasy scenario we imagine in our heads or some far distant future that may or may not happen.
Russia and China at the moment are not imperialist and the geopolitical conditions currently are such that there is no realistic path to them becoming imperialist in the short to medium term. Refusing to critically support them because they might as some point in the very distant future or in some unrealistic, contrived scenario become so is liberal idealism.