[dirtyid]

>Yeah, China just defines a country as "not another country" when they want to interfere. See Hong Kong, Taiwan, or pretty much every other neighboring country and their territorial waters or exclusive economic zone.

Yet those definitions of domestic issues were made by ROC, and acknowledged to some degree by most security council members post ww2, which PRC inherited, and have been largely consistent in enforcing. PRC isn't making up domestic interests for geopolitics, it's protecting domestic interests despite geopolitics, i.e. PRC maritime disputes predates UNCLOS which opponents are retroactively wielding to constrain PRC interests that predates it. It's not PRC changing definitions or rules or interests.

>China is a startup empire

And it's important to see how PRC is trying to build the new empire. Apart from brief phase where Mao was exporting revolution, in aggregate it has been predominantly peaceful. Unprecedentedly so, even more so as PRC grows, contrary to expectations. PRC military today is more powerful than it's ever been, yet PRC employment of force is near historical level of restraint, i.e. instead of thousand casualty boarder skirmishes with India when PRC was barely industrialized, recent sino-indian skirmishes ended with 10s of casualities. That's ridiculously reserved all things consider. There's quite literally not another ascending power who has reached pacing strength with the existing hegemon as fast and as peacefully as PRC in recent history. Current indictors show if PRC assumes role of global police, she would actually just focus on policing (with customary bias), versus current US trigger happy global policing that's a reflection on her domestic model. Which is probably a better example for future hegemons all things considered.