Basically a civilization scale heat-pump, similar to a central state, but over several countries. Which makes rebellion against the empire - a not so noble act, once things actually get scarce- decomplexification prevents the opening up of empire subsidized discovery of new energy sources. At the same time, empires can be unproductive, basically rentseeking and abandoning the purpose the heatpump originally was build for.
Of course to the post colonialists, the existence of any heat pump is pure evil. And for the individual it is. But then again this ignores that the situation is evil. If the selfish drive to have all the offspring, maxes out the ressources, dissolves all the institutions and decomplexifies all things, a empire structure is needed to build a weather-satellite rocket from the food of to many peasants. Its horrifying, and was not necessary in recent memory due to the surplus productivity of capitalism. But if you decomplexify the beast that allows you to only have good situations - you restore the need to create the beast that handles only
PS: If india rises similar to china- the dependence on trade rises- otherwise - they would have outposts similar to the chinese in africa all of a sudden. The situations and dilemas depicted are universal, thus any country given the societal equipment (culture) can bump into them.