LogFAQs > #942193222

Alteres posted...

As to them becoming a competitor, yes in some ways.

A huge, powerful, and rich nation doing such things is always going to be much more worrying than a smaller nation doing similar things. Especially from a global perspective .

It seems a little silly to ask why people are more worried about a country with massive influence and reach than a smaller one.

Yeah, like, North Korea is probably worse, but its evil is mostly contained within the borders of North Korea and affects the people who have the misfortune of being born there.
Superpowers like China and the United States, on the other hand, have the power(hard and soft) and motivation to meaningfully effect foreign nations worldwide. The U.S. , of course, has a very, very long and sordid history of supporting(and, on some occasions, directly instigating) coups against governments it doesn't like(most recently in Bolivia). China has been building up influence abroad via economic investments in the developing world and, of course, has been clamping down ever-tighter on internal dissent(real and imagined).