Read the history of Iran for its democratic aspirations. Hint, it predates the Shah who was installed by the US and whose reign of terror led the population to prefer Khomeini!
Vietnam, same, read its pre communist history all the way prior to French Indochina.
Chile, same, read about Chile's 60s era prior to the coup that thwarted democratic elections when the people voted for a centrist socialist.
While you're at it, you might want to read up on US involvement propping and supporting dictatorships throughout South and Central America in the 60s through 80s. We called it anti communist support of course. Our overt and covert support meant our corporations had preferential treatment, some of which even nearly owned countries. We helped create an elite class which came with repressive regimes to keep the peasants at bay.
Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant. Regimes change, people change and times change. There is no guarantee that every single leader that comes onto the political stage is going to be competent and wise. You can't look at one person, one period of time and blame everything on that one particular thing. George W. Bush was incredibly incompetent. He literally did NOTHING except getting rid of Saddam Hussein and advancing daylight-saving time to start in the spring. But you don't see people uprising to all of sudden abandon democracy despite all the hacking endeavours by China? https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-equifax-breach-021020
I never said China was innocent. In fact, I say China is just as corrupt and guilty as the US advancing their special interests wrapped in democratic and free enterprise ideals.
We were the top dogs post WW2 until the early 90s, that's a long time! But we got fat and lazy and believed we were invincible, something about being god anointed... But the rest of the world caught up, the countries of Europe created Europe and its ideal, no small feat, and made it much stronger than it was to compete with the gorilla in the room. Then Asian nations worked really, really hard demonstrating their capabilities while we crushed their cars and called them every racist word in the book. First the Japanese, then the Koreans and now the Chinese. Each is out there to prove that they can do as well as, if not better, than the other guy and the US.
They did, they are and, while we are still very good at many things, we are no longer good at many more things that we were the best at. And instead of taking on the healthy competitive challenge, we point fingers and spew racist hatred.
That's all very good of what everybody achieved but the problem right now is with China's world domination and imposing its doctrine and ideology onto others instead of tolerating and embracing differences in others. That is just as racist as somebody shouting racial slurs, if not even worse. You are talking about the annihilation of cultures and history and the identity and very existence of who they are as a person. There is no problem with China's development of the "one belt one road" initiative. But WHY is it deliberately excluding some nations? The West let China into the WTO and now China wants to exclude other nations just because it thinks it's rich enough? You think China would've had the prosperity it has today if it wasn't allowed to join the WTO? Nice way to bite the hand that fed you. But why China wants to do that? It's obvious. It wants to establish its own regime, its own order of things. It basically wants to become everything that it's always preached against.
China is not just "not innocent". China is worse. It sees the evil in others and it seeks to repeat it and make it even worse.
After all, you should win. You have Thor and Faramir and Wolverine and even Eowyn (She is no man!). 