WISH I WOULD HAVE READ THIS EARLIER

Just stumbled across a passage from the late-Qing/early Republican thinker Liang Qichao in which Liang seeks to describe what he sees as the "new" imperialism of the West (and Japan):

“’Some use trade to destroy the nation,’ he charged. ‘Some use debts. Some use military training. Some use consultants. Some use (rail)road-building. Some take advantage of factionalism. Some use the excuse of quelling domestic disturbances. Some use the excuse of assisting revolution’”
(Liang Qichao, Mie guo xin fa lun ; 灭国新法论. Cited in Gwen Raymond Guo, “China’s Korea? Chinese views of nation and region.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2003, 25).

Aside from the last case of "assisting revolution," every other practice on Liang's list of the acts of the "new" imperialists can be seen in the Qing Empire's own relations with Korea in the last half of the 19th century. Would have been nice to use this in my book.