Comment by cthalupa

We're talking about the modern world, though. China's imperialism over the past half century is not significantly different from any other major world power. The choices we have aren't 1500s Spain or 1700s Britain vs. 2000s China.

And Belt and Road is the Marshall plan writ large, and it was considered to be one of the largest imperialist plans ever by the USA, and B&R covers many many countries outside of that map. You'll notice all of these loans they've offered have very favorable terms for them - it's arguably many times more exploitative than the Marshall plan.