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Comment by nativeit | Hacker News Reader

China has been aggressively developing infrastructure and financial services all over Africa and the rest of Asia.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106866

Yeah I saw this in Cambodia when I lived there. Sihanoukville had become a Chinese enclave almost completely.

Different to the way that French colonialism worked, though. Less direct government, more influence of existing power structures and respect for the local government.

There is definitely an argument that this is plain business investment - China has a lot of foreign currency to invest because of its trade surplus, and there isn't the opportunity within China to invest it all, so it is engaging with trade partners to invest in their economies so that they can increase future trade with China.

You can also make the argument that this is not benign and China is trying to create control over foreign governments with this investment.

I'm kinda "both can be true, but either are better than how we did it"

Go ask anyone in Southeast Asia which they'd rather have colonize them: USA or China.

They'll usually refer to China in terms like the "thousand year enemy".

That really depends on who you ask. If it's that bad then why did all of those countries sign up for the RCEP?

Ask Latin America which they'd rather have colonize them.

We don’t want anyone to colonize us just like you don’t want your country to be colonized. China offers business opportunities while the USA and Europe seem to always look down on everyone else and impose their own values on others. China does not give a shit about how we run our countries as long as they can trust that deals will be honored. We don’t want to be taught how great your democracy is or whatever, we want our countries to become better by our own efforts, with fair deals when dealing with other nations.

Yes, of course, sorry for the expression. I just mirrored the expression used in the parent comment. What I mean is that the US have caused a lot of pain in Latin America.

This 100%. We’re neither the back yard of the USA, nor the front yard as Biden said, probably thinking that was a good thing.

Get the F off our lawn and stop dumping your rubbish on it!

> We’re neither the back yard of the USA

Go tell them, half of my country wants to CONTINUE being the USA backyard.

That's a worrying trend in the region.

And the other half wants to be China's instead. Clearly they are a strategic partner when it comes to AI technology, as for other areas I'm not convinced they would be an improvement.

> Get the F off our lawn and stop dumping your rubbish on it!

Big words... For a continent with zero nukes and negligible military power. That sort of delusional posturing worked wonders for Venezuela.

For once, we are in agreement.

> Reversing last year’s trend, a slim majority of ASEAN respondents selected China (52.0%) over the US (48.0%) if the region were forced to align itself with one of the two strategic rivals.

https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/The-Stat...

Grass is greener on the other side. Hegemony on the other side of hemisphere is greener or benevolent.

I’ve only been to Vietnam but the answer there is it’s… complicated.

They’re culturally part of the sinosphere but of course constantly living in the shadow of your much, much bigger neighbour to the north does breed some ill feeling.

The USA on the other hand, well, they’re not particularly popular either for obvious reasons

The irony is much of the China-ASEA acrimony seems to be over China's aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Which was a dumb move because, given Chinese economic superiority, they could have just quietly negotiated 99 year military base leases and oil/gas extraction with the UN-recognized territorial owners.

Same outcome, less bad blood.

Seems a bit of an own goal to militarily force the issue and antagonize its neighbors, who it's trying to convert to its sphere of influence.

Yes the whole "wolf warrior diplomacy" stuff in the late 2010s was massively counterproductive for China and just pushed everyone else in the pacific back into the arms of the Americans.

The mask (if there ever was one) slipped and they revealed a lot of information they probably should have kept hidden about their intentions for no real reason.

However they did eventually realise this, they've completely changed tack and they're having a lot more success (helped by the US adopting their own failed policy).

You're right though, I'd imagine politicians in SEA countries haven't forgotten

They've mostly been concerned with resource extraction rather than colonial exploitation like the West. And in fact, they've ditched most of their infra and tech projects in Africa, because of inherent instability in dealing with tinpot dictatorships.

On the other hand, every one in Asia is wary of too much Chinese presence and influence.

resource extraction

stealth colonialism

The alternative is western colonialism Africa experienced before, and bombing campaigns.

Western colonialism is better than eastern colonialism tho. Look at the Russian orgs in Africa.

Better for whom? Certainly not the colonised...

Yeah for the ones who get colonized, western ones were better than eastern ones. Japanese ones would've made Britishers look like kids when they were occupying eastern India.

You know the British invented the concentration camp in Africa, right?

We're told a relatively benign version of our history. You kinda have to travel to the countries involved to get the real version.

Even with all the downsides of being colonized by Britain, it was still far better than being colonized by Belgium. Heck, being colonized by pretty much anybody but Belgium was better than being colonized by Belgium. Read up on the Belgian Congo sometime: it was a parade of horrors.

GP was making a relative comparison; pointing out that both were bad in absolute terms does not negate the point. -2 is still greater than -17.

Who cares who invented it first. Who did it best? Japans concentration camp was unholy abomination and it doesn’t get enough attention today

How can you see the road not taken?

You check existing conditions and extrapolate.

You just put Russia and Japan as "Eastern"; they have nothing to do with each (and I would consider both as more Western than Eastern regarding imperial/colonial matters) other nor with China. China is a massive country that has always been massive and rich. Their style is more like the tribute systems they had before, as it is being observed in the BRI and other projects.

I understand China but in no way were japan and Russia close to western. IJA, MAO and soviet union makes westerners look like chuds. Russians still have the wagner group shit which is nowhere near what western countries have currently.

First, sadly, the west is full of similar examples, like Leopold II in Congo, Nazi Germany, the Bengal and Irish famines in the British empire, transatlantic slave trade... Not to talk about similar genocides perpetrated by third nations but with the support of the west like the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. I see quite a lot of similarities. The West is not a moral example of anything at all, but the opposite.

But second, Russia is not Eastern, it was more European than anything else until the Soviet Union. And Japanese Empire drew inspiration in the Western nations, even if they took it a even more horrible twist. So blaming this on "the East" is racist and reductionist.

Western countries have good internal competition that the atrocities they commit can be stopped by themselves whereas middle eastern/eastern ones needed external support for reformation famously hiroshima, deng reforms, soviet dissolution, korean war.. west is superior in terms of liberalism and capitalism that any successful country you can think of now has roots in utilising its ideas.. this is not to downplay atrocities committed by westerners but to think that somehow western nations are worse than eastern is being in denial. Russia was more european before the communists started their revolution and made themselves anti-west. They support many kinds of anti western movements like their war crimes in Africa, support for iranian/Islamist regimes, support dictatorship of china etc. these are all happening right now.. you are talking as though churchil wantedly cause famine in India when there's limited resource and he had to take care of his country before shipping to India and there was some amount of corruption too in Bengal at that time.. I'm not saying that they're blame free but it's a complex issue with multiple causes..

even the AI that was trained on mostly using western data and infrastructure that chinese models distill and all..

I did not say Eastern are better, but rather that they are not worse. And having good economies (that started with colonization, slavery and imperialism) has nothing to do with morals, rather the opposite. You can be extremelly efficient at exploiting people. Western genocides are complex, but Eastern ones are pure evil? That is what I mean, this is just racism.

Then you mean they are equal right? Which is also blatantly false. Capitalism and liberalism alone would compensate for many of the drawbacks caused by western atrocities. You talk as though colonisation, slavery, imperialism was only done by western when eastern/non-capitalist countries do that routinely since ancient times. Those are human nature and any system u can imagine has its traces rooted in ancient civilizations. I'm also from India and I know what the British did was bad but even before that there were issues within ourselves. But it was nothing to what the Japanese alone did when they occupied just a few parts of India. Exploiting people lol.. as though there aren't different levels of exploitation between now and then and the freedom to choose to work in different places now.. this is just plain old Marxism.. i must have internalized racism jz cz West is better in terms of liberalism and prosperity and reform than East..

> i must have internalized racism

Yes.

Sorry ignore the other reply.. i thought I lost my comment..

> Yes

Beyond parody .. as expected of Marxist thinking..

"whatever happens we have the maxim gun"

Well if we take India as an example we have the Bengal famine.

For the love of God, you guys are brain broken.. there's a limited resource and churchill didn't want to provide to India because of that and add that there's some major corruption in Bengal at that time that caused it.. you guys don't see nuance at all..

India had a system in place to handle famines, Brits decided to do away with it setting the stage to allow millions to die. Was it also just corruption that caused millions to die during the Irish famine?

How do you not know about the policies like prioritising calcutta and ignore other regions of Bengal, surrounding states restrictions to supply food to bengal, price controls, local shortages + 1942 cyclone + british prioritizing their own citizens all caused such issues.. jz doing a cursory research would have provided you these details.. if churchill wanted to intentionally induce famine, how does that explain him asking FDR to provide as they surplus and why FDR had to not do that.. please jz do a cursory glance regarding irish famine too.. some folks jz can't do pros and cons of their own views as well which is a shame..

Are you really Indian? Would you prefer that India was still occupied by the UK?

What a disingenuous question. Par for the course for the likes of you. Just because I view the west as less evil than the east doesn't mean we like to get colonised. These are my views:

1. We would not like to get colonised. 2. But history shows that the world was a place where you conquer or be conquered. 3. Mughals first invaded and as they were falling then, Europeans occupied, which is par for the course if you view the world history at those times. 4. It would've been better if they left early but they were better than japanese imperialists and nazis who bose was cozying up to. 5. The japanese were super violent to indians. I can't imagine the nightmare scenarios if japanese enacted what they did in nanjing/Andaman/few east indian places but they were weak at that time and British + indian army repelled them which is good. 6. After colonisation, nehru, being fabian, failed to open up the economy and he sympathised with soviets/china which exacerbated many economic and military issues at the border. 7. 1991 reforms changed india for the better and it would be better even if they pivot to green energy so that they can pivot off of Russia and Ally with west which biden and dems were trying but now trump worsened the relationship.

Single counterexample for single counterexample: Belgium's Leopold - not sure if Western colonialism is so much better (and notice I didn't even bring up "western India")

Not so much better but better in general compared to the middle eastern/eastern colonialism.. westerners have good competiton that the atrocities will be self corrected by itself but middle eastern/eastern colonies needed external western support like Korean war, hiroshima/nagasaki.. main example I can think of opposite is china under deng but there too deng had become relatively capitalist to fix the issues.

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