Maybe from the U.S. perspective, but at this point there are heaps of countries around the world who at least claim to be dependent on China.
This is a matter of global moral cowardice; at least today, the U.S. is more ready to say no to it.
Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hardly there for hundreds of instances of the US doing all kinds of shit to third countries throughout the 20th and 21st century with bi-partisan agreement and the public hardly caring...
China is shitted upon for those detention camps (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over a million muslim deaths have been directly and indirectly (e.g. pharmaceutical and food shortages) caused by the Iraq embargo/invasion alone [1] (one of several), and people talk about China as if their shit doesn't smell...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimat...
Especially since they don't have and historically didn't also have any problem with all kinds of dictators, right wing governments, etc. (from Suharto and Pinochet to UAE), as long as they were allies.
> A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal described "the rigging of the 1999 Unicef survey" as "an especially masterful fraud".[12] The three comprehensive surveys conducted since 2003 all found that the child mortality rate in the period 1995-2000 was approximately 40 per 1000, which means that there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after sanctions were implemented.
You seem to forget that the Iraqis liked Saddam which is the only reason he stayed in power. Did they care about the genocide of the Kurds? I think not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal_genocide
Want more proof? 15 years after Saddam was executed, they were still proceeding with their ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Iraqi%E2%80%93Kurdish_con...
If you really want someone to blame, blame France, England, and Russia for arbitrarily drawing up countries after WW1 without considering that people in the middle east wouldn't overcome their nationalism and racism which would lead to continuous conflict.