China routinely harasses Vietnamese/Filipino fishing boats IIRC to the point of boarding/assault, and it's expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea illegally. It hasn't turned into a war yet because so far the other countries have just been taking it on the chin rather than more aggressively defending themselves.

There's a reason why so many countries in that region are very happy to partner with the US for military drills or support.

China kind of says a lot of things Russia was saying for the past 20 years. A lot of the wester world (not all) said, yeah yeah, it's all just talk. Then it wasn't.

I sincerely hope China doesn't go that was as it is to me, despite all its flaws, a super impressive country, but I think it careless to ignore warmongering talk.

The South China Morning Post itself recently wrote on speculation that Beijing could try to challenge Tokyo’s control of Okinawa, given its history and proximity to Taiwan.[0]

[0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3333468/ch...

China has started border skirmishes with India every twenty years or so since the founding of the PRC. And then there's Tibet. Just because they haven't initiated a mass invasion of Eastern Siberia you shouldn't get the idea China isn't pursuing an expansionist foreign policy.

That's a fair point if you only start the clock in 1949, but it's not scaremongering. It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.

The territory we now call "China" is the product of relentless expansion and assimilation. Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia,d , Manchuria, much of the southwest... none were historically Han or Mandarin-speaking. Beijing's own justification is usually "they were Chinese all along" (because "genetics" -- or because they once paid tribute). That's the same logic every empire has ever used.

Modern Han Chinese themsleves carry heavy Mongol (Yuan) and other steppe ancestry, descendants of the single most successful conquest dynasty in human history.

For centuries the Chinese court literally styled itself the center of the world and demanded tribute from "barbarians" on every side. Zheng He's fleets in the 15th century were larger and reached farther than anything Europe fielded for another 80 years. China stopped because the court lost interest, not because it lacked capability or ambition.

Today's Nine-Dash Line, wolf-warrior diplomacy, and the "century of humiliation" narrative are all framed as restoring China's "rightful place." Xi's favorite phrase is "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," and the classical concept behind it is tianxia: "all under heaven" belongs, ultimately, under one orderly hierarchy (guess whose "manifest destiny" it is to sit at the top??).

So when people say "China doesn't invade," what they usually mean is "China prefers to win without fighting," which is straight out of Sun Tzu and exactly the current playbook. Pretending otherwise is how you lose the game before it even starts.

since WW2: Annexation of Tibet, Taiwan Strait Crisis, Sino-Indian War, Sino-Vietnamese War.

US needs China to have something for us to rally against, otherwise focus might be on the asset owners vs workers, which would cripple us.

We need to win the AI race! The implication being that there can not be more than one winner…

> How many wars has China started?

In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India completely unprovoked over some border territory. China’s aggression continues unabated even into present day - they’ve been illegally annexing territory in Bhutan to put pressure on India. That has been China’s way of negotiating all their borders - through violence first. More can always be said but here’s a simple 2 minute video explaining the 1962 war - https://youtu.be/zCePMVvl1ek.

Here you are defending China when I bet you’d be hard pressed to point to Bhutan or Aksai Chin or the Chicken’s Neck on a map. But those are lesser known places. Are you seriously claiming you don’t know of the Nine Dash line and the violence with which China enforces its absurd maritime claims?

There's heavy investment in spreading lies about China. HackerNews consumes that shit just like american teenagers consume tiktok.

For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia

“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?” -Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, directed at Japan

Is that not a threat?

“We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us, without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?”

- Chinese Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, in reference to Japan

I don't know. China is pretty successful so far in "solving Ukraine" by propping up the moth infested bear pelt USSR animatronic that is Russia.

Taiwan just the last remnant that the losing faction of the China civil war still holds. I don't think that China wants to conquer korea or japan. Having a vassal is usually cheaper than outright conquest and occupation. They just want the US vassals to switch to being China's

> That cost is simply too high; no one in China wants to pay it

China was happy to invade Tibet and assimilate it's population.

Hard to believe that a government who claims all of South China sea, large parts of India (Arunachal Pradesh) does not want to expand.

Or do you think people of Arunachal Pradesh are also Chinese?

> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.

Your illegitimate authoritarian government is free to surrender at any time and hand the keys back to the legitimate democratic ROC government then.

For those unfamiliar with the history, Taiwan’s (ROC) own constitution says it is part of China. Its dispute is with the CCP, not China itself.

Conflating the PRC vs ROC conflict with a China vs Japan conflict is just ignorant.

> No one wants 125 million thoroughly non-Sinicized Japanese inside the country; that would be seen as an endless headache, not a prize.

I don't think what you claim the people want matters (if even true). Look at Tibet and Xinjiang

> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.

"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.

> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”

Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.

Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.

In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.

> Taiwan is different: the vast majority of people there are ethnically Chinese, so reunification is seen as an absolute necessity.

How does that make it a "necessity"? It's not for China to decide? This is the reasoning Russia uses when invading neighboring countries. To "protect" russian people and claim that <insert part of country> are russians anyway and want to get annexed (still wouldn't make it right). If someone wants to join Russia, they should move to Russia.

(Or maybe it could happen through some longer and slower political process. And the country as a whole should agree, with a lot more than 50% agreeing, to a unification.)

> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”

Like above, I hope you're not implying that a culturally similar people in another country #2 somehow gives country #1 power over it's sovereignity.

The majority of the people of Taiwan are ethnically Chinese, but this is a relatively recent status. Taiwan is not an ancient part of China.

Taiwan has become ethnically Chinese in 2 stages, first an immigration from the neighboring Chinese province that is a few centuries old, then the invasion of the island by Kuomintang at the end of WWII, which took the political power from the native Chinese.

So Taiwan has become a Chinese-populated territory only during the last few centuries, and the desire to unite it with mainland China is not something that can reassure China's neighbors that this is where its desire of expansion will stop.

I read Chinese news from China in Chinese sometimes to get a bit of language practice. It's not western media reporting that China says Okinawa isn't legitimate Japanese territory. It's Chinese state media saying Okinawa needs to be "liberated" from Japan.

Fears that China one day tries a Russian approach by saying "no way bro. We'd never try to take Georgia. Nah bro. We'd never try to take Crimea. Nah dude. We'd never try to take eastern Ukraine. Nope. We definitely aren't interested in taking Poland." aren't exactly baseless. And just like with Russia, they justify their prodding of a sovereign country as "well it's our territory" (it isn't). China already has fighter jets and ships going around the Senkaku Islands periodically. It's clear they'll take them and push further and further if they think they can get away with it.

While I'd like to believe this, I also know that CCP have as of late tapped in to a dangerous remedy for the dissatisfaction of their rule(economic slowdown): Nationalistic fervor.

From my Chinese friends (and Hong Kong friends) it seems to be clear that the "century of humiliation" rhetoric is getting more prominent. Which includes rationalization such as "Japan and West (and Russia) humiliated us so it's our right to revenge. Whatever they're complaining about right now is just historical rebalancing". My British friend in HK seems to be getting tired of this rhetoric thrown at her every time she meets a Chinese person.

And CCP might be drinking that nationalism koolaid and get hooked to it just as US/West and recently Japan is. It's a very useful tool for the elite to dissipate discontent and I'd belive it will only accelerate.

And it's a strong rationalization rhetoric. Whatever "historical" you claim will probably be moot. Give us a decade or two and you'd probably be here posting something along the line, with multiple citations that have accumulated during the time

The CCP has demonstrated that it’s not above killing tens of millions of its own citizens to achieve its political aims. I doubt they’d see ‘pacifying’ an occupied population as much of an issue.

Invasion is one thing, unfavorable trade deals, deindustrialization, and political coercion is more realistic outcome yet all the more undesirable. Imperialism after all often didn't spread spread by outright conquest.

> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it and gained a warm-water port

What, does the Pearl River freeze over in winter?

> Take Myanmar as an example: even if China occupied it […]

Historically, however, the record is rather unflattering for China in its engagements with Myanmar (formerly Burma) – China has waged four wars[0] with Myanmar and suffered a defeat to Myanmar in each instance.

[0] Or one war with four invasions – depending on the point of view.

Can you clarify this for me: the Soviets don't exist, so how can they possibly take the whole of Japan - in some future?

If you mean Russia, then no.

Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of the current capabilities of the respective armies and economies.