What is the intention of China

In every conversation, forum or western think tank talks, this question would pop up. What is the intention of China's growing economic and military power? What a stupid question to ask. The Americans and the West are getting stupid but they should not think the Chinese are stupid. What kind of answer are they expecting from the Chinese? What would they think they would do or intend to do if they were in the position of China?

The only sensible western academic that has some sense of propriety and reasoning is Hugh White. His answer was simple commonsensical. When one is rich and powerful, one would just be rich and powerful just like the Americans. Are these westerners and Americans still believe that China would live in a world created and dominated by the West for the last two hundred years and continue to be subject to the rules of the West and the existing balance of power?

For more than two hundred years since the invading hordes of European colonialists went about conquering and colonising the rest of the world, the balance of power is such that they should be holding all the powers in the world and the rest of the world must be subject to their power. They would want to possess all the weapons of mass destruction and no one else should have them, and if anyone else has them, the West or the Americans must have 99 pieces while the other one can only have one. And every piece of the American or western weapon is to be bigger than the one possess by the other one. This is the balance of power for the last two hundred years. The Israel is trying to impose this formula on the Arab/Muslim countries as well.

Any country that want to have more than one weapon, even two or three, is immediately branded and demonises as aggressive, unconstructive and destructive, and not playing by the international rule they created. The Americans can have all the military bases around China, fly and sail their military craft on the coast of China, and this is the norm. The American Carrier Battle Group can sail freely in the seven seas to challenge and threaten any country, including China. China cannot fly or sail its military craft out of China or the seas around China. China cannot have military bases outside China. Doing so would be an aggressive and provocative act. China having anti carrier missiles to deny American CBGs from threatening China is accused of being an aggressive act. The Americans sailing CBGs to the Taiwan Straits to intimidate China is not aggressive? The bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade is not aggressive? The rapes of Iraq and Libya and Syria are not aggressive?

The Americans can build military fortresses in the Indian and Pacific Ocean filled with nuclear weapons and WMD and not aggressive. The Americans proliferating nuclear weapons all over Europe and Asia not aggressive? China cannot have a few aircraft or naval ships in its islands in the South China Sea. This is provocative, expansionist, aggressive act that upsets the balance of power?

What is China's intent in doing all these? Do the Americans and the West believe that China, with all its economic clout and military might, would continue to be holed within its land and sea boundaries and allow the Americans to have free play around its borders, flaunting their military prowess and might?

Do the Americans and the West really believe the Chinese are so daft that after being invaded, their country looted and plundered during a time of weakness, would accept the same status quo imposed on them by the colonial and imperial powers of the West then and today?

China may not want to be like the colonial West or Imperial Americans, to want to control and dominate the world militarily. The least China would want to do is to look at the Americans straight in the eyes and to tell the Americans to back off and not to cross the path of China in its economic development and growth and in building its military power to defend itself. The least that China would want to do is to stop the Americans from telling and coercing them in whatever they are doing. China would want to be an equal member in the community of nations and would not allow the Americans or the West to dictate what China can or cannot do.

The balance of power would be 50:50 and no longer 90:10 in favour of the Americans and the West. If the Americans can have 11 CBGs, can have 1000 military bases all over the world, China would also want to have the same if their economic and military strength allowed them to do so, not that they would go that way.  China did not have the ambition to be an Empire and need all the military bases and CBGs to protect the Empire, to bully the world and to rule the world. China just want to be a rich and powerful nation, to chart its own destiny for the prosperity of its people and perhaps also for the prosperity of the rest of the world, without being a military Empire.

Did I answer the stupid question being asked by the West and the Americans? Or are they hoping that the bankrupt West would continue to dictate the terms of international relations in their favour when China is strong enough to say No to them, that China must continue to be push around by the West, by the Americans?