I see this term thrown around. I swear to God, with my limited knowledge of the world, this makes no literal sense to me. I'm not trying to be snarky, but it sounds like China has too many friends and this is imperialism, but obviously this isn't the meaning.
just tell them that china gets exported more capital than it exports itself and link them minqi li
and then when they show their whole ass by saying that any export of capital is imperialist call them infantile idealists and tell them to shut the fuck up
li's analysis iirc was mostly first order as in he didn't take into account how much of the exported chinese capital rois came back vs stayed domestic. idk if anyone's established a framework for analyzing these higher order movements but would be cool to see.