[safety1st]

- very little of this has ever extended outside Chinese borders, apart from the extraterritorial policing of Chinese nationals; they've not "gone global" in the way the US did

I would dispute this. They just use tools that most Westerners are not familiar with. Take a look at how most of Southeast Asia's economies are organized, and at the top, you'll find a whole lot of Han Chinese families. In many cases these families emigrated generations ago, put a fair degree of effort into keeping their bloodline Chinese, still build shrines to their ancestors, and still maintain deep ties to the mainland. Dhanin Chearavanont, who runs the largest monopoly in Thailand, is Chinese-Thai and holds Shenzhen's Foreign Investor license #001. Probably half of the Cambodian economy is Chinese-owned at this point. The list goes on.

The Chinese do it through family and blood and assert a lot more control than most Western onlookers realize (but Southeast Asians are well aware). Outside of an invasion every few decades, the US exerts a weaker level of control on a greater number of countries. US military influence crumbles once they leave, whereas Chinese family influence endures for centuries.