I'm not sure any of this stands out to me as particularly imperialistic. The standards thing just seems like a sensible move to try and get leadership in high tech industries, which any country would be smart to do. As for the military aspects, I think this is a bit funny. China has 2m active military personnel vs 1.3m US active personnel, which doesn't seem outlandish whey you compare populations.

As for the fleet and the disputes, we are literally talking about disputes between China and the US in the South China sea. All these disputes are quite clearly about China being pissed off that the US is projecting power right on their doorstep. It's similar to Russia parking its missiles in Cuba - completely unacceptable to the US. I don't think it's unreasonable for China to be looking at finding ways to challenge that hegemony.

I'm not going to try and make the claim that US and China are similar regimes- they're not, not at all. I don't beleive for a second that a hegemonic China with power similar to what the US has had would be anywhere near as good as the US has (and I'm not saying the US is perfect). But I do think there's a certain level of asymmetrical judgement here. Why is the US running warships through disputed waters off the coast of China? That seems a lot more like US Imperialism than Chinese Imperialism.

>All these disputes are quite clearly about China being pissed off that the US is projecting power right on their doorstep.

The South China Seas dispute is, in fact, primarily between China and a series of smaller nations like the Philippines and Japan. International governing bodies including an UNCLOS tribunal have consistently ruled against China's claims of sovereignty to open sea, but China keeps on doing it anyway.

That's not imperial behavior?

I’m not defending China’s claims- they’re clearly fairly spurious and embedded in a fairly questionable end of WWII. The truth is it’s just a pretext for having a gateway from the South China Sea to the rest of the world- which I don’t think is particularly unreasonable as an aim. The question is why US war ships are 7000 miles from the mainland US, if I had to pick I would say that is far more imperialistic. And again to reiterate- I prefer the US as a hegemonic power, but let’s be real about what’s happening.

>The truth is it’s just a pretext for having a gateway from the South China Sea to the rest of the world- which I don’t think is particularly unreasonable as an aim.

But you're shifting around from principles to consequentialism. Suddenly, whatever rules China breaks, even if they are extremely serious ones to do with territorial control that underlie the peaceful international order we've enjoyed since WW2 ended, it's fine with you as long as it's in pursuit of an aim that you consider reasonable?

That's a fairly blank check, innit?