⭐ Merited by stompix (2)
I would add though, that absolutely no country in this world has flourished thanks to any kind of imperialism or colonialism or external meddling.
Yeah...absolutely no country...
Let's forget New Zeeland and Australia because they were actual colonies, let's forget South Africa because of imperialism, the same for Singapore and Hong Kong, or the products of external meddling like South Korea.
The only ones that did not flourish are the ones that are not flourishing even now, independent and making their own decision.
Speaking of Chinese, this is the uncomfortable truth, of course, if a white man would have said that he would be labeled a racist and stoned to death with tweets and pokes.
OK I admit it, guilty of sweeping statements, sorry =)
Although, I'm not sure why you mentioned China and white people. Where I come from, there is still a lot of bad blood over China, Japan and others -- just not the outright spitting-at-them hatred of my grandparents -- while we've pretty much forgiven the more recent centuries of white slavery. You need only to come see our tourism sites or check out hashtags where we are. White people can make any kind of jokes and actually do. And they're okay, we even laugh along. But god forbid a Chinese/neighbour-from-SEA man says something bad about the place or people;) They'll get the full media treatment and apology demand from embassy.
Anyway, we're risking going off track buddy, though perhaps your examples might differ from the viewpoint of an indigenous person. So we may have different perspectives of flourishing. From your examples, that perspective if today marginalised, if not completely extinguished.
Australia, the only former penal colony turned country in the Commonwealth that refuses any treaty with their indigenous people. New Zealand who has one of the highest global incarceration rates -- with overwhelming majority of prisoners Maori (only 1 in 6 Kiwis are Maori). Singapore whose original indigenous are all but gone. South Africa, well.
Anyway, we could both spend our hours digging up Google stuff but let's leave it at that and hope that Bitcoin does some good in its neo-money-infiltration-colonialism =p
But I suppose