Considering the rising British Empire during the early 18th century and the current superpower, the USA, during the mid-19th century, and the USSR during the early 20th century, is China behaving any differently as a potential future superpower?
I.e., is there any noticeable difference between 21st-century china, 20th-century USSR, 19th-century USA, and 18th-century Britain in terms of imperialism and hegemonistic ambition?
No, there isn't much difference in the "imperialistic" ambitions and behaviour of China vs the old superpowers.
Imperialism did not begin with outright invasion and occupation of a future colony. It often began with trade, which the imperialists used as an opportunity to establish themselves there. They would then use their economic and military might to force trade concessions in their favour. (And ofcourse, during the imperialistic era, even outright militarily conquer the weaker nation states or kingdoms).
China seems to be following the same path.
Africa is a good example that is highlighted often in this context. In its search for raw materials for its industry, China has been increasingly making deep investments in Africa. They also convince some of the governments to allow them to bring Chinese workers to the Chinese companies in Africa. And they setup chinese communities in those country.
It happened in Zambia like it could happen elsewhere in Africa. Chinese investors made deals with the government to mine its natural resources, filling federal coffers with billions of dollars. Chinese immigrants moved into cities and rural towns. They started construction companies; opened copper, coal, and gem mines; and built hotels and restaurants, all providing new jobs. They set up schools and hospitals. But then instances of corruption, labor abuse, and criminal coverups began to set the relationship between the Chinese and the Africans aflame.
... “China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism,” Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, wrote in the Financial Times earlier this year.
Source: China in Africa: The New Imperialists?
The hallmark of European colonialism was the imbalanced trade in which raw materials was harvested from the colony and then have manufactured goods sold back to them by the imperialist country. China, as the manufacturing hub of our current world, seems to following the same pattern.
And, just like in the past, China also seems to be competing with other "imperialist" powers.
Sudan is a very good example, where the Chinese have invested heavily by building pipelines and oil refineries and they now import around 2/3 of the oil output of Sudan. They have even deployed Chinese soldiers to protect Chinese workers and their infrastructure in Sudan. All this has annoyed the USA, as US oil companies previously had the upper hand in exploiting the Sudanese oil fields. The US has tried to bring oil embargo sanctions against Sudan (citing the political conflict in the country) but China has always threatened to veto it in the UN.
“It is surprising, the coincidence that U.S. sanctions began around the same time China invested in our oil industry,” a Sudanese government official offers sarcastically. China has invested in other aspects of the industry until it controls as much as 75 percent of the Sudanese oil industry. Sudan currently produces 133,000 barrels of oil per day — a fraction of what it produced before the south of the country seceded in 2011, taking most of the country’s proven oil reserves with it.
Source: Sudan: China’s Original Foothold in Africa
Another way it tries to economically subjugate another country is by creating "debt-traps" for them. The term was coined by the US and the gist of it is that China targets countries that is strategically important to them (economically and militarily), that have weaker and poorly managed economy and encourages them to take huge loans from China to build some infrastructure, some of which are not even commercially viable. The debt, and any commercial failure of the project and / or the country's economy, is then used by the Chinese as leverage to make more demands on the country.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka are very good examples of this kind of "debt traps", where their failing economy and the huge loans from China has made them very vulnerable to China.
Two countries in the neighbourhood, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, signed up for massive Chinese debt-funded infrastructure projects, slipped into economic crisis, and now are caught in political turmoil. In a third country, Myanmar, the Chinese have moved back in after the military coup 14 months ago, and are pushing projects for an economic corridor. In the Maldives too, Chinese-funded projects and loans have risen and fallen with changes of government. Estimates of the Maldives debt to China vary sharply — the opacity is typical because China has a history of hiding loans as trade credit or by routing them through special purpose vehicles. And Chinese debt isn’t cheap; interest rates seem to be about three times what other countries charge on bilateral aid.
... What is China’s role and responsibility? Like a sharp moneylender, it stepped in where it saw opportunity and picked targets carefully. Projects and loans went to resource-rich or strategically-placed countries, 70 per cent of which did not have a good credit rating or any rating at all, and which therefore had few, if any, alternative sources of external finance. It protected its interests by holding project assets as collateral, taking over quite a few. Lending has therefore been followed by asset-grab ... China exacerbated but did not mostly cause the problem, whose roots lay in the borrowing countries’ broken politics and economic mismanagement.
Source: China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ played role in Pakistan, Sri Lanka crises. But it’s not the cause.
... in South Asia, with the Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific as new theatres of contestation, Beijing will, and has capitalised on opportunities to further entrench its presence, influence, and leverage in the region. Sri Lanka is a prime example of China having taken advantage of internal fiscal mismanagement and debt. A New York Times investigation into the 99-year Hambantota Port deal and 15,000 acres of surrounding land that was given to a state-owned Chinese company revealed an insistence on the Chinese side to focus on handing over equity in the port, rather than allowing any easing of negotiating terms with the Sri Lankans. Additionally, while China explains the deal as a purely commercial endeavour, Sri Lankan officials have stated the intelligence and strategic opportunities the port offers were part of the negotiations – aspects that have serious security implications for India.
... China has also included dubious clauses in bilateral agreements that directly contradict the benign nature of the BRI and reinforce the proactive debt trap diplomacy in other parts of the world. Montenegro is one such case where China has loaned €800 million to build a highway. A provision under the agreement states if Montenegro were to default on repayment, China would get the right to access Montenegrin land as collateral – directly alluding to a strategy of seizing assets in case of inability to repay. This will provide China a direct entry into Europe.
China’s ‘debt trap diplomacy’ is not a figment of imagination. While it may have decided, for strategic reasons, to keep it in abeyance in some parts of the world, it is blatantly apparent in others. The pattern is quite clear in India’s neighbourhood where it is systematically acquiring real estate for strategic reasons.
Source: How China Is Expanding Global Influence via Debt Trap Diplomacy
In the last 2 decades, after signing a treating with another world power - Russia - the Chinese have also started using their military aggressively against other countries. See this answer here for more details on how China has been increasingly willing to engage in low-intensity military conflicts in territorial disputes in many parts of Asia.
The increasing use of its army by China mirrors the imperialistic ambitions shown by the old superpowers.
Nah, doesn't make much sense.
Take the US. Depending on the timeline you can perceive a quite peaceful nation. Or not.
From 1800 to 1917 you see a largely isolationist country. Yes, yes, there is the annexation of Texas, from Mexico, but I'll see you a Tibet. A little blip too: Spanish-American war. Blink, you've missed it.
But you also see a fair bit of meddling in South America, the banana wars.
Still, overall, aside from pestering its Latin American neighbors not all that busy until 1950 - a war started by NK, Russia and China. Before you object that I am misreading those periods, look at the US military budgets and number of men under arms. They are low, outside of both world wars (and the Civil War).
From there, yes, you see the America people are used to see swinging big sticks. But depending on what exact time period you were looking at before, you might expect an entirely different outcome.
OK, now on to China:
From there on? Peaceful. So far. But the military budgets are not low.
You could say that from Mao's death on, China concentrated on building its economy. You can either read that as China reverted to more peaceful ways. Or it recognized it couldn't have strong military capabilities without growth.
Looking at the Spratleys and the Nine Dash Line is also a cause for concern. In fact, China has, IIRC, territorial disputes with about half of its neighbors (Russia, Pakistan, NK, Myanmar are exceptions. Lovely friends). And so is the totalitarian nature of the CCP, if you subscribe to the somewhat questionable theory that democracies do not declare war on each other. sfxedit's answer makes a good point that, as far as resource-seeking diplomacy goes, China may be a lot more like the old boss than it likes to claim.
China's future behavior, at the superpower/world stage level, is not preordained from its recent past however. It depends mostly on how it and the US decide to manage their growing parity. To take a swipe also at Asimov: personalities matter: minus Xi and Trump things might have looked very different. So it hard to gauge future trends - looking at the past is unlikely to teach one much:
a land power with dangerous neighbors is different than an isolated country (the US and modern China are both safe from local threats).
European nations in the 19th and early 20th century had a strong drive to conflict built in due to their colonial subjugation practices: they were competing against each other to steal land from others.
past 1800 (Napoleon and Clausewitz's Total War), Europe is a concentrated powder keg of distrust and militarism until 1945.
From 1950-1989, NATO and the Warsaw Pact had no choice but to compete globally for supremacy, as they had diametrically opposed ideologies.
The USSR is also a bit odd, as it was invaded by Western powers in 1919, to punish it for bailing out of WW1. You don't have to a fan of Communism - I am not - to see that that might influence its world view and behavior.
These are all particular circumstances, unlikely to reappear as such to influence Chinese behavior.
What is also missing from looking at the past is the unique recent circumstances of China: long the dominant regional/world power, then humiliated and mistreated by outside powers, with a helping of massive warlord anarchy in the early 20th century. Nothing in the above examples matches that.
The one more useful thing to look at, and it is not reassuring, is how often two powers that start out with a power disparity and not on entirely friendly terms end up in a hot war as the disparity narrows.
How the US/West and China manage that is still in the future and retro-reading tea leaves doesn't help.
Yes. China has not gone to war recently (for the past several decades) except for some minor border skirmishes with India, while the US, UK and USSR all fought many wars in the periods you are interested in.
And compare vs.
