Based primarily on the this Truthout article:
There was a time when China was referred to as a society which was Communist or Post-Communist; today, the terms Authoritarian Capitalist or Capitalist with Asian/Chinese Characteristics are more common. However, there is a new term that appears to be increasingly applicable to the operation of the Chinese state and its impact on the lives of Chinese people and, above all, the education of Chinese youth born in the 1990s. It is increasingly clear that China is the most powerful, mature and internationally accepted fascist state in global history and its status as such should cause us all a great deal of concern.
[...]
While Chinese rarely express an open desire for imperialist expansion, an ideological sense of the inevitability of such expansion is a hidden part of national political consciousness. Rather than being self-admitted expansionists, Chinese expansion is instead expressed by characterizing foreign nations as "part of China" which must one day be reconquered and brought into the fold of the motherland to redress the historic injustices of foreign domination by restoring territorial integrity. The fact that these Asian nations are not part of the People's Republic of China (PRC), as they are supposed to be, is yet further ammunition for a sense of national grievance and humiliation. Press university students on the matter and one will quite easily be told that not only Taiwan and Tibet, but Mongolia, the Koreas, much or all of South-East Asia, Japan and most of the Philippines are somehow "part of China." The argument relies on obscure racial and cultural connections that somehow make these independent nations part of a larger Han empire that - while never having existed in the past as a national entity and, even on a cultural level, has no basis in linguistic and genetic links - must one day be re-established for Chinese dignity and territorial integrity.
[...]
If the Chinese fascist regime is permitted by the international community to continue its rise to prominence, then the consequences will be borne by the people of democratic nations and we have already seen the early stages of this global trend. A powerful fascist state of such maturity and size in the world will increasingly come to determine political debate in nominally democratic countries as the economic advantages of such a regime draws more and more financial resources away from less "efficient" political systems. If China continues to be able to use its fascist state apparatus to attract investment at the cost of liberal democratic nations, then the characteristics of these nations will tend toward increasing fascism in an imitative defensive response. This trend is already far advanced and if it remains unchecked by the active engagement and protest of constituent peoples in the form of actively entrenching our essential social and political norms of individual rights and egalitarian application of the rule of law, then we will witness the slow erosion of the democratic freedoms that were fought for nearly 70 years ago. It is no longer adequate to harp on about "human rights." The necessity of economically isolating regimes which fail to meet certain normative political and legal standards is of paramount importance to the long-term survival of the idea of pluralist government which protects a measure of individual freedom.
So, Chinese fascism combined with a high-functioning economy is not only going to be a big problem for us in case of war, it will be a bigger problem in case of prolonged peace, because the efficiency of such a system will indirectly and directly taint our own rich and powerful to compete. Either out of greed for equal opportunity of money, or out of fear and avarice in an attempt to avoid marginalization, bankruptcy and being directly bought up.
If we were to battle fascism today, I dunno if we'd have the politicians or willpower to actually do it.
Edited by duke_Qa, 06 February 2012 - 03:58 PM.