The Americans built their empire by forcibly taking over the lands of other peoples, extinguishing their cultures and languages, and forcing them to adopt the cultural traditions of the empire in the name of patriotism!
Meanwhile, China and Russia got that big by... uh...
The west outgunned everybody because they had capitalism. China didn't. Instead, china had gunboat diplomacy and 20% of junkies because the brits decided to use opium as a weapon of war.
Let's swallow the Russia bit, right? Because Russian history from Ivan III to Nicholas II is basically exactly imperialist colonialism.
And then you just focus on the China bit. Yes, the westerners did that to China in the past. Does that mean that modern day China is structurally incapable of being an imperialist country in the 21st century? Or because the CCP pays lip service to socialism (while Xi tells people to train as Confucians) we're supposed to ignore the actual capitalist nature of its economy/society?