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You didn't answer what I asked.

You said that capitalism by definition leads to imperialism. I asked how socialism by definition precludes imperialism.

China is a socialist state so by definition cannot be

Can you elaborate on that? I agree that China is not imperialist, but I don't see how socialism by definition precludes that possibility.

If you truly think this is a display of Russian aggression I genuinely doubt that you have any historic view on the geopolitics of the region. The conflict did not appear out of thin air in 2022. The situation is more complex than "Russian aggression"; in fact that's not even a part of the picture. Russia is responding to requests for assistance after Ukraine began bombing its own people in 2014. Many of these people voted to join Russia after this disgusting display by Ukraine. Before 2022 most of the combatants against Ukraine were regular people fighting for their homes and families. These people realize that Ukraine wants to bomb their homes and Russia is offering to fight alongside them. On the weekend before the SMO began, there were 2000 ceasefire violations in the Donbass. Between 2014 and 2022, 1 million Ukrainians immigrated to Russia because of the abuse by the Ukrainian government. And since the operation began in 2022, another 1.3 million immigrated. The people in these territories that Ukraine has zero regard for view the support they are receiving from Russia positively: they invited Russia in to assist them, and they are somewhat reliant on Russia to protect them from Ukraine.

I know life is a lot easier when you don't muddy things with context. I know that it's a lot easier to be righteous in your condemnation of a world power because they're "evil" and an "aggressor" than it is to acknowledge that the situation is more complex. I know that it's a lot easier to go along with what Western media says than to be informed and hold your own opinions. I know it feels nice to rally with everyone against a perceived enemy. I know it feels nice to feel that your country (and military) is finally doing something good for once. But you can't let wanting to feel good stand in the way of reality. The Western media has done a hell of a job propagandizing this war, attempting to remove any historical and geopolitical context, in order to gather and maintain support. Think honestly: how much historical and geopolitical context have you seen, especially from popular media sources? How much more effort is spent on raging about current "evil deeds" than understanding the desires of the people in the actual territories that have asked Russia for help?

Please read, and inform yourself. Life is less black-and-white than "Russia evil".

The OP put a non-paywalled link in the post body.

Every day:

• The Pentagon unveils $1.3 billion for Ukraine, bringing total new U.S. aid this week to $2.3 billion.
• US to provide $345 million in military aid for Taiwan
• US Senate approves $12bn for Ukraine in government funding bill

Every other day:

• student loan relief shot down
• budget accountability shot down
• tax enforcement on top income earners shot down
• funding to medicare slashed
• funding for food assistance programs slashed
• funding for school lunch programs slashed
• funding for public schooling slashed
• union strikes shut down
• tax relief and subsidies increased for most profitable companies
• tax relief for most wealthy individuals
• funding for clean water programs slashed

I try not to view government spending as zero-sum because there's no saying that not spending money on X means that money automatically gets spent on Y. But the government's priorities could not be more clear: its citizens (and common citizens of the world) are not of any concern.

Posts show when they were posted. This one was posted on May 24th, 2022.

It seems you're right. I will edit that part of my comment. But I will point out: I wasn't making a statement that one was worse than the other. I made the point that they're similar in ranking and like I said, even if you reverse ranking order they're still just as similar. And, since they were middling in their ranking like I originally said, if you invert the sorting, they're still middling.

Your wiki link for inequality has China ranked 98, not 71, putting it much closer to the USA at 107.

I'm not sure if you understand how a ranked list works: you can invert the ranking order and the relative difference is identical. Whether you say China is 98 and USA 107 (a difference of 9) or you say China is 71 and the USA is 62 (a difference of 9), the relative difference is the same (it's 9). The only difference is how you interpret which is better, which I didn't do. My point was they're similar and middling in the ranking.

Also notably, the Gini index has a very long list of nominally “capitalist” countries ahead of China, which meet your criteria for a sustained fight against inequality and taking care of the poor.

This is irrelevant to the point I was making. My point wasn't that China is uniquely positioned with low income inequality. My point was twofold: it is middling in its rankings (i.e., not the most unequal), and it's decreasing. The fact that it's steadily decreasing is directly related to the point I made about the CPC truly working for the people to solve the real problems they're facing: they identified a problem, identified some causal factors, discussed the importance of fixing it, made plans of how to fix it, are implementing those plans, and make reports on the progress of those plans. You'll also notice that those capitalist countries which have less income inequality than China have more government intervention in the market (i.e., tempering the "free market") in part because the issue doesn't address itself in a capitalist system, and intervention has to be taken to address the problem. This is what China is doing, too: their income inequality problem isn't magically going away on its own free will, it is going away because of government intervention in the economy.

Forgive me as you’ve written quite a bit here but this seems to be the only concrete policy to discuss vis-a-vis capitalist vs communist systems. The rest is subjective language about “working for the people”. Every politician gets up on stage and talks about how they’re fighting hard to give people better lives. No one really gives those statements any credit.

The difference is that Western politicians rely on selling a promise and not delivering. Yes, they get up on stage and talk, and then do nothing. With the CPC, they actually show results. They make plans and publish them, they implement them, and they publish update reports that show whether or not they stuck to what they said they would do. This is not another situation with empty promises; if it was, they either wouldn't publish update reports or the update reports would show that they aren't doing what they said they would. You're confusing form and function: both CPC and Western politicians make promises, but the Western politicians do not deliver and the CPC does. There's a reason CPC support in China is so high, and it's because the party truly works for and benefits the people; if it were empty promises that never benefited the people, they wouldn't have so much support for the party.

(Edit: I was wrong in the direction I had sorted when I wrote this comment initially. I have removed the now irrelevant part. My point still stands: the two countries I compared are similar, and China is middling in it's ranking; inverting the sort order doesn't make the countries less similar, and since they're middling, inverting the sort order means they're still middling. I didn't make a claim that one was better than the other).

It's available for free on a popular "scientific research paper file sharing site"[^1] if you search for its title.

[^1]: The founder of which just won an EFF Award a couple days ago!

The point is not how you feel about it. The point is the reality of the situation: despite whatever protest or complaint people had, it had no bearing on the actions of the USA and no punishment was brought on the USA. As such, the USA calling for punishment on someone else is hypocritical. It wants to pretend to be the world's police while simultaneously being the biggest crime boss, and it deserves to be called out for that.