This is a fairly complex question, that needs a little history lesson.
Now, in the middle to late 19th century, and the first decade of the 20th century, China was subjected to multiple colonial treaties and concessions that led to the nation essentially being turned into a corporate entity for the purpose of exploitation by European (and Japanese) colonial enterprises. Now, the idea that the Chinese Manchu emperor (who was not a member of the majority "Han" ethnic group, whatever that means considering the various subgroups that consist it) had sold them out to the colonists was widespread, and all of this culminated in the 1912 Revolution (with a lot in between!)
What ensued was a civil war, a brutal Japanese occupation and the total destruction of the nation. Now comes in someone called Mao Zedong. Maoism has a major theoretical focus on the third world, and this theoretical focus on combining proletarian and peasant classes into one national whole was used as not only an organizing principle in the broken and divided post-civil war China, but also as a powerful theoretical idea against the "imperialist bourgeoisie" i.e all those who had thrust the unequal treaties on it. Hence, in this project of "socialist anti-bourgeois" national regeneration, the first step was throwing off the unequal treaties and the demolition of the Chinese state as a result of colonial meddling. This led to China's occupation of Tibet, intervention in the Korean war and so forth. Now, over here we see a strand of intervention developing.
Fast forward to 2019. Since the 21st century, the Maoist national-revolutionary attitude to Chinese nationalism had been stripped off its...socialist elements and turned into nationalism proper. The Chinese Communist Party essentially pushes a narrative that due to atrocities and offences committed against China in the past, it itself deserves redress. They see neo-colonialism through economic means as one of the major ways by which to do so. It is a social Darwinist view, that to survive in this exploitative world and prove China on the world stage, and restore Chinese pride, it has to essentially "Europeanize" its diplomacy with the intention of challenging American hegemony. If that explains it!
