Hey we remember that time when

China has emerged as the country’s number one oil importer and in return has poured tens of billions of dollars into oil-for-loans deals — mainly for energy and infrastructure, filling critical voids and increasing reliance on Beijing.

countries that help build other countries and follow the rules

Instead, it’s likely China will use this attack to present itself as the only global powerhouse that adheres to international law and upholding a rules-based order. Chinese state media has been busy framing this attack as a “resource-grabbing power play” which will result in the US ceding moral high ground. “By any definition, the US military operation amounts to an invasion,” the China Daily wrote on Monday. “What the world is witnessing is not a rules-based order, but colonial pillaging.”

were painted as the bad guys and the arseholes who wouldn’t uphold the rules based international order that they were already allegedly winning peacefully and economically and overcapacitatingly by following the rules.