The short version is that what makes a person their nationality can either be adherence to a set of values (civil society) or that their parents were that nationality (an ethnic society).
China is clearly an ethnic society. America is practically on the verge of civil war over whether they are primarily an ethnic (white christian) society (GOP), or whether they are a civil (rule of law, believes in human rights) society (the very imperfect DNC).
Civil societies aim for everyone to be an "us," while ethnic societies have a strong idea of "us vs them." So when these societies ask "how should resources be distributed?" Ethnic societies tend to believe they are in competition with everyone else for all resources and they should try their best to attain as many resources as possible. This directly results in supremacist leaning beliefs and old world imperialism. Setting up British schools in India and taking all their resources is absolutely a supremacist policy, as is killing native Americans and taking their land. The fact that these softer forms of supremacy are not taught next to the holocaust is a disservice to the average persons intuitive understanding of what supremacy looks like and what kind of spectrum genocide exists along.
Ethnic societies are not governed directly by a set of values, so they tend to be ruled by dominance alone.
So from a jaded point of view America is an empire just as China is an empire, but from a forgiving charitable (extra emphasis on charitable) point of view, a Chinese empire is trying to suck all the resources of earth up in to china, while the American "empire" is trying to establish a set of laws and values that apply to all people (human rights) while trying to address the very real tragedies of the commons we are facing (over fishing, global warming, nuclear annihilation).
The reality though is that ethnic forces in america are strongly at work trying to achieve power, and liberal civil forces in america are extremely weak, so the "liberal world order" can be supplanted by "American supremacy" (America first), and we end up in a state where we look old wold imperialist via neocolonialism.
At the end of the day that means the most important thing for Americans to do is fight the ethnic party, and if we can't do that, then we don't deserve to exert our influence abroad, and should rightly be resisted.
They do offer a lot of goods.
And they do build lots of infrastructure abroad, like in africa.
Also the theoretic doctrin behind is communism for all people, not just Han Chinese. In practice it has of course become very nationalistic, but I really doubt they dream about ruling the whole world.
Some taoist thinking of maintaining a healthy balance between the forces is also still alive. They would like to become the dominant power, though and that would be arguably worse, than US dominance.
But I actually would prefer it, if no state has dominance over others.
That's extremely naive or jingoistic. American Empire means ravaging the world to generate profits for (some) Americans, while allowing some immigration and racial mixing.
That’s true to some degree but I think you will struggle to find a single nation who’s actions aren’t at least in some part fuelled by the personal desires of the political/business/military elite.
Personally speaking I have more to gain from American imperialism than from Chinese imperialism.