This is international diplomacy 101 for China.

They're very vocal about the perceived infractions of others, while refusing to acknowledge their own.

Its more about shaping the perceptions of their own citizens than whatever foreigners might think.

In this case, theyre dead right ofc.

The fact that they went with “Trump broke international law” instead of “America's unilateral actions validate our unilateral actions” gives me some hope (for lack of a better word) that they're going for a diplomatic / economic victory by trying to take the vacated US place as “leader of the free world” instead of going full Trump/Putin on a world that's already got enough shit to deal with.

The end point is still the same, of course, and I'm pretty sure it's not a very good one from an European citizen's point of view, but at least this would take longer and be less violent overall, and might help defuse Putin and Trump.

China will just follow Trumps playbook.

Why would they do that? His playbook is dumb and routinely backfires.

Seems like they're stick with their existing playbook as it has been far more successful

It is okay to accept that the US is bad. You don't have to cope by saying "ohhh yeah but wait until China!"

China isn’t wrong

usually true

The US has been scheming on taking Venezuela for at least two decades. But you are very smart for pointing out this action was a distraction from the pedo files.

Perhaps we're not used to it blatantly being displayed. This is who the US is, was, and unless addressed successfully, always will be.

When has the US ever cared about “complying with world order”? They’ve set the order for decades and clearly continue to today, as evidenced by the fact that they’ll get away with this with no greater consequence that mild condemnation.

The United States is the world order. This is the rules-based order in action - the only rule is "obey the US".

Russia already condemned the US' actions in this.

Hardly. I'm just not blind to other countries crimes.