Disagree. The Spratly island shenanigans, in particular, are squarely aimed at Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam, which in your analogy are the smaller, younger victims of the bullies.
Every country has been acting the same. Look at what the US control and ask why that is. The difference is that China has been on the receiving end of the stick over the last centuries while the US (for instance) has been on the giving end. There is no right and wrong, just being weak or being strong.
Just six comments deep from random coastal volcano and we are already at the Nietzschian übermensch, that escalated quickly!
In the larger picture, let us all consider the logical fallacy of tu quoque. A counter-claim that "you do it too" does not refute the original claim.
Colonial attitudes have changed. Western powers gave up their territorial maximalist doctrine a long time ago. Basically all former colonies of the West are now independent.
Meanwhile China is engaging in neo-colonialism with Belt and Road. You can handwave about "might makes right" but the reality is that by the standards of our day, China is not proving to be a force for justice or equity either at home or on the world stage and we ought to frown on that.
75 years after that was written, it was well outside the political mainstream.
Objectively, what China is doing is not worse than what the US have been doing, or than any Western powers have been doing because it's just how it goes.
Why? Your 'arguments' don't really make much sense. I mean whatever US was doing in the 19/20th centuries was no worse than what the other colonial powers did a hundred or two hundred years before that. Which was no worse than what the Mongols did during the middle ages. So according to this 'logic' everything everyone does is completely justifiable because someone did something worse at some point in the past? Absurd...
Some of the replies I get are childish and ridiculous. The US control land almost up to the Chinese coast bit China is the bully for finally being able to assert a few claims in the South China Sea... how far can hypocrisy go
As for the neighbours' input, we'll ask Mexico, Cuba, and South America...
Curious, what land is this?
Camp Casey maybe? That's something like 200mi from the Chinese border (through NK of course).
This is ahistorical. The nine dash line is a creation of the CCP, not of the ROC. It was not claimed from the ROC's time. More importantly however, it's just a claim. China went and built military bases on objects that were in other countries' already existing territory before the nine dash line was created and then committed military attacks against civilian vessels who used to use the areas to force them away.
> Look at what the US control and ask why that is.
Much of it is former territories that were taken over after WW2 defeat of the Imperial Japan, and many of those territories have over time been either been given independence, given the option of independence, or given to other countries.
That's factually incorrect. The ROC calls it the eleven dash line (PRC removed 2 dashes at the border with Vietnam) and they were the ones who created it before the PRC even existed [1]
Mainland China has taken possession because they are now strong enough to do it. It was only a claim before because they were too weak to assert their claim physically, which any large power would have done, or to make the others recognize that claim.
> other countries' already existing territory
The borders of all the countries in the areas were decided by Western colonial powers, and China was simply too weak to assert its interests and wasn't invited.
There is not right or wrong here. This is simply power and how things have always worked. It's naive to buy the "good guys bad guys" or "bully" narrative, which is only propaganda from one side against the other.
Saying that ROC and PRC have same claims doesn't say they would be same in their disregard for general order