You can’t say NATO is imperialist due to soft power, trade and structural dependence while claiming China isn’t imperialist because it doesn’t use classical political domination (like I argued for the EU). Either you include economic hierarchy and asymmetry or you don’t.

I say NATO is a tool of imperialism because NATO countries super-exploit the global south for super-profits, and practice unequal exchange, establish hegemony, etc. This super-exploitation via finance-capital is what imperialism is, period. NATO is merely the hard power to protect it. China doesn’t underdevelop the countries it trades with, nor does it practice unequal exchange, simple as that.

“Underdevelopment traps” are exactly what China is trying to create. They don’t eliminate dependencies, but reorganise it around Chinese capital, logistics, standards and demand. That’s still an unequal relationship, only replacing Western capital with Chinese capital.

You can claim this, but it has no basis in reality. Western countries have been trying for decades to project their sins onto China to scare global south countries away from BRI, BRICS, etc. China isn’t developing hegemony, and again, doesn’t practice unequal exchange nor financial plunder. China forgives countless loans, its interests are towards multipolarity and ending US (and by extension European) hegemony.

I won’t discuss this definition of imperialism further as you clearly have an agenda which paints all “Western” countries as imperialists while only applying the definitions of imperialism to them, but not the rest of the world. Feel free to write about inequalities and exploitation with me, but please try to not be partisan.

My agenda is that I’m a communist, seeking an end to imperialism. If we apply the definitions of imperialism equally, globally, then it’s quite simple: the US Empire is the world empire, with Europe and other "westernized* countries like Israel, Australia, etc as vassals. China is not a participant in imperialism, but instead is undermining it, and this is clear because countries that have been underdeveloped for centuries under European domination are flourishing via mutual cooperation with China. The forces are different and thus the results are different.

I somewhat agreed to some points you made, e.g. the exploitation of the global south being a bad thing, and much of EUs wealth being based on economic domination, but your rhetoric shows that this is where our common ground starts and ends at the same time.

Westerners do tend to accept personal guilt, but tend to not accept that other countries can simply be better. This kind of western exceptionalism is an aspect of western cultural hegemony, but as material reality continues to develop the contradictions make themselves more naked and obvious.

’m not saying EU and NATO are saints, especially since the EU does atrocious things at our borders, and supports war and famine, but I won’t go down the rabbit hole further arguing selective definitions of imperialism. This is simply making ideological exceptions for the sake of the argument.

I’m not selective with how I apply the definition of imperialism, I’m honest with it, which is why I can say that the west is imperialist while China is not. I don’t argue for the sake of argument, but because I wish to end imperialism forever and establish socialism (as China has already done).

But, if I dont mangle the definition of imperialism to support my stance, the foreign country is better than mine and that’s illegal