You can look at specific cases: the 97% "vote" in Crimea is worthy of a banana republic. You can legitimately call that "imperialist" or "expansionist." You can also find deep flaws in the transfer of Hong Kong. It wasn't an open expression of the will of the people. But we also have the track record of how Hong Kong has been run since then. You will find good and bad in that record but it would be hard to call it an indication of imperialism.
Heh, Hong Kong and Macau are a perfect of example of China having possessions taken from them (by Portugal and Britain) and then being returned. If anything, despite what people locally may have preferred at the time, we're talking a return after 100 years on territory that had been occupied for thousands of years by Chinese.
