If you all will forgive a significant digression let me dust off my International Relations which is what my first degree was in although I never used it. Funnily enough I did have a chat with a CIA recruiter one time but by that time was already doing my studies in preparation for what I actually do now (that and the polygraph would've probably been
interesting to say the least.) Sometimes I wistfully think of what might have been and the missed opportunity to run around subverting democracies and fun shit like that (or more likely sitting in a cubicle and functionally doing basically the same shit I did in school, writing papers.) Anyhow...
China are far less imperialistic than the US. They are only interested in Economic dominance, but they see their own culture as a thing for the Chinese people, in that sense you don't see them exporting and imposing their values as the west did during the colonial era and now through mass media and the cultural industry. They are very nationalistic and live their political processes inwardly, so they are not interested in exporting their model. This is why we haven't seen a flood of Chinese music, cinema, books, TV programs, etc, correlated with their economic rise, as it was the case with the US for example. They don't have a cultural agenda for the rest of the world. They just want to flood our shelves with their products. They are only interested in becoming an economic power. They are not bombing people or promoting coups to bring communism as the west has done to bring "Progress" and "democracy".
Check out what China is doing in Africa though. Not fomenting coups (yet?) or dropping bombs but doing exonomic imperialism very much on the model of what the US has done in various places. They are less militaristic than the French also operating in Africa (something you almost never hear about) but are definitely pushing their political and economic model (see the very totalitarian Eritrea which receives a lot of Chinese aid and there has even been discussion of military bases) but more importantly exploiting natural resources and setting themselves up to do so and thereby coopt the West with various critical supply chains thereby increasing the already very significant dependence of the rest of the world on China. This might arguably be a net good in that it is another factor to prevent war but nonetheless any inch of power to the Chinese is dangerous as they are, quite contrary to what you are saying, getting much bolder with subversive overseas activities including right here in the US (Confucius Institues? Underwriting grants for leftist professors? And of course a lot of plain old spying...) which bring to mind the "active measures" of the KGB. Make no mistake the Chinese definitely do want to establish dominance and make the whole world dependent on them and eventually develop their system.
tl;dr: Sina delenda est.
And to be honest, and I don't mean this in a bitter way, just taking the license to be sincere on this point: the global south would probably be better off with a Chinese dominance. The biggest detriment to social change in my region is the lurking fear of a US backed coup, and its a fear not without grounding, as it already happened in '73.
Chile and Allende? No pretendo explicarte la política de su propio país
pero also for the benefit of other readers there was a lot of fuckery in the 1970 election by both the CIA and the KGB so it's not really fair to single out the US here for being interventionist just because their particular active measures in terms of backing a certain brand of
caudillismo won out. Pinochet to say the least did a lot of horrible things but who knows what a socialist to at the very least semi-Marxist (although not fully ML) government would have done if they had more time (I imagine just as many Russians would eventually have wound up down there dictating economics as the "Chicago" Americans did under Pinochet despite Allende's almost Third-Worldist stated desire to develop a distinctly Chilean socialism. The KGB was all over the place too. It even seems elements in the KGB deliberately screwed Allende in '73 in hopes of getting someone more Russian influenced in power during the chaos. Obviously didn't work out well for them. But what if the coup had failed?) If not for foreign involvement there would probably be a comfortable and stable government of an elitist and conservative kind of nature (the name of the candidate to his right from the PDC that Allende very narrowly defeated escspes me, he had been president before?) but much less extreme that what would up happening.
But it is pretty much impossible to really imagine Latin American politics then or now without a lot of foreign fuckery by gringos and pinkos alike. Since it was on the US doorstop, it was both immensely attractive to the latter as a way to threaten US interests and the former to maintain a cordon of Marshall doctrine safety. It is unfortunate that many very real human lives are used as pawns in that game but the truth is that it was being played by both sides and putting the blame entirely on the US is unfair.
The Chinese undoubtedly would like to get a seat at that table but at this stage I don't think they have the capacity or the balls to really interfere in Latin America to the extent and in the way the USSR did, although they are doing their stuff there,, right now they're first and foremost busy fucking around in Africa which entails not only messing with the French but there is in fact a much larger US presence there than people think at least in terms of military bases. That is where shit is going to pop off in terms of Chinese vs Western political fuckery and I am absolutely certain the Chinese would have no problems backing a coup or two if they can get away with it. They are preferring subtle means for now though.
While they are not using that kind of overt violence and their totalitarianism is relatively "soft" (social credit scores and creepy re-education camps vs chucking people out of helicopters) you can have no doubt that the Chinese will be more than happy to export it along with their cheap plastic trinkets and shoddy synthesized cathinones.
I say this with all respect and no intention to sound confrontational or whatever. Please don't take it personally. You know I love you all, and when I was in the US for work a few years ago I got to really appreciate and understand your culture, and I felt welcomed and had a great time. I have nothing against northamerican people, it's just your foreign policy that kinda suck, I guess it's not hard to see the reasons why.
Yeah it must kind of suck as a continent to have had the Bolívarian revolutions throwing off the Spanish monarchy in the 19th century and then not to soon thereafter getting sucked into the control of a much closer superpower. It's kind of the nature of international power politics though. Communism that close to home was (and is) just not something the US can tolerate, we came very close to nuclear war over Russian actions in a much smaller (albeit much closer) nation and currently are engaged in all sorts of fuckery in Venezuela and Bolivia. Interesting to note that they maintained significant Russian ties e.g. they are currently getting Russian COVID Vax and even more interestingly Chile is getting the Chinese one which is a significant flex of soft power if their ever was one. Interesting times we live in for sure.