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.