Not to mention the "debt trap" China created under the guise of Silk Road Initiative. They go in to modernize the infrastructure for all these piss poor countries, but instead of hiring the locals for labor (which would actually help their respective economies), workers are brought in from China. To make matters worse, if these countries can't pay back their debt, they give rights to China to their ports and whatnot for the next 100 years. It pretty much allows China to come into your country and do whatever the hell it wants to do.
I don't disagree with your western perspective, but it fails to look at this from a Chinese perspective. If you want to point to the origin of the conflict as China asserting its territorial zone of influence and not US putting strangleholds on an assertively competitive economy, you should at least consider looking 120 years back further, to the treatment of Chinese people by colonial nations. I know a little about it because my great grandparents were colonials in China in 1900 and wrote books about their experience. Suffice to say, if any foreigners walked our land the way we did theirs, we'd revolted until they were all pushed back and humiliated enough never to threaten us again. The Chinese will never again allow foreign powers to dictate anything to them. They're the bullied kid who has grown into a tough fighter encountering the bullies who have become the establishment. They're eager for a fight yet fear another humiliation and inconceivable acknowledgement that they aren't the dominating people. It's all really absurd and immature and deadly, closing in on a fanatical great swinging dick war, as most are. I agree, the bullied cannot be allowed to become bullies, but do we have the establishment maturity to reason and be heard, or are we going to flex our muscles and threaten back. Munich and Hitler don't provide a workable template but is the potential war of all wars any better?
China digs a hole for itself, then retaliates against the West for its own leadership incompetence. There was for example no reason for china to boycott a whole raft of Australian products because Australia asked china to be open about covid source. China salami slices Nepal, India, South China Sea countries, now Russian territory. Then china is involved in continual technology theft. As it digs a deeper hole for itself, then it claims victimisation, the West is getting wary of becoming involved with these idiots. Even chineses citizens are wary of chinese authorities, they spirit their money out of china into Singapore and Australia, canada etc because of chinese behaviour. China installs spy / observation cameras on every street and runs a credit system to control behaviour.
I think both of you have a point or two. Around 30 years ago I came to the US after graduating from college in China, so I have been living in the western world, namely the USA, for most of my adult life. What do I feel about the current situation between the US and China? A quite mixed view. On the one hand, I am very happy for and proud of China’s tremendous achievements in the last 3-4 decades after the country opened up in the late 1970s. But I am also keenly aware of China’s shortcomings. The political system is far lagging behind western democracy among many other problems that I will not dive into. I truly wish China improves in the future and becomes an even better country. On the other hand, I have witnessed some extreme anti-China sentiments in the west and much unfairness against China by western countries. One of the most notable is double standards exerted upon China. Not to mention one sided policies of the US to suppress China’s rise. I believe a more unbiased approach can provide an objective ground to resolve the present conflict. God forbid a war arises because of this in the already fragile world facing a myriad of crises, such as global climate change, etc.
China was the center of invention for the past 2,500 years, and it was remarkable. But for the most recent 100 years (turn of 20th century) all they seem to be able to do is copy copy copy.
Well when you’re technically behind so much all you can do in the beginning is copying others. After more development and advancement you can start innovating again. In fact, China’s innovation flourished in the past decades, such as 5G technology from Huawei, drones from DJI and the whole EV revolution, just to name a few.
5G is simply a communication standard that was defined by a consortium of scientists and communication specialists and engineers, like all standards, and was initiated by NASA like 15 years ago. The USA, UK, Japan, Isreal, India and South Korea all were working on 5G before China started "innovating it". Copy copy copy.