We can be critical of all empires
in the modern context, imperialism describes a phase of capitalism. it's characterized by international monopolies that control industrial capital, finance capital, and raw material extraction while partitioning the world among themselves. this is a phenomenon that includes monopolistic firms of many countries (US, western europe, australia, japan). while it could be argued that russia takes part in imperialism, it could also be argued that because russia is denied access to many routes of imperialist collaboration (NATO, G7, Davos, etc.) it more resembles a pre-imperialist structure that has national monopolies and takes part in colonialism in its own sphere of influence that is demonstrably separate from the imperial core. but China is not imperialist: monopolistic practices are cracked down on by the government, less than 40% of enterprises are privately owned, most of the raw material extraction is state-owned, and they dont engage in colonialism. we like China here because they are in direct opposition to imperialism and they are a great example of the successes of socialism
i commented once and some weirdo told me i wasn’t a real communist bc i said “death to america”