Lenin laid out 5 characteristics of imperialism for us to consider when analyzing whether a nation is an imperialist nation.

1) The concentration of production and capital developed to such a high stage that it created monopolies, which play a decisive role in economic life.

2) The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this "finance capital," of a "financial oligarchy."

3) The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities.

4) The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which share the world among themselves.

5) The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed.

China is undoubtedly engaging in exactly one of these (number three) as necessitated by the modern material world. It needs raw materials and overexploited countries need capital in order to develop. China fails to live up to any of the other metrics of imperialism laid out.

Not only is it failing to live up to these metrics, but as a country whose goal is not capitalism, but socialism and then communism, it could never colloborate with "other capitalists" in order to carve up the rest of the material world. That's antithetical to China's goals!

At some point soon, people really have to ask themselves what they even mean when they say China is an imperialist nation. All available evidence is just too contrary to that point by now.