China has it's client countries that it owns for the most part except for in name. Same with the USA.
I was going to use Ukraine as an example. Unless there is a very large amount of oil or something found in some shitcountries, limited warfare in 3rd party nations is going to be the only way countries get occupied by major powers. Syria is probably safe for now because there are far too many factions fighting in the country for other powers to step in and take sides against each other. Crimea is more worrying to me though, because sanctions can only go on for so long without different measures being taken. If human rights issues were raised at some point, and there was a campaign to appeal to the public for military action in western countries, for example, it could turn bad quickly.
North Korea also falls into this category in my opinion. If the current leadership collapses, or some other factors combine to make the country collapse completely, China probably won't sit on the sidelines. Chinese occupied Korean territory could be a very tricky diplomatic issue.
I was going to use Ukraine as an example. Unless there is a very large amount of oil or something found in some shitcountries, limited warfare in 3rd party nations is going to be the only way countries get occupied by major powers. Syria is probably safe for now because there are far too many factions fighting in the country for other powers to step in and take sides against each other. Crimea is more worrying to me though, because sanctions can only go on for so long without different measures being taken. If human rights issues were raised at some point, and there was a campaign to appeal to the public for military action in western countries, for example, it could turn bad quickly.
North Korea also falls into this category in my opinion. If the current leadership collapses, or some other factors combine to make the country collapse completely, China probably won't sit on the sidelines. Chinese occupied Korean territory could be a very tricky diplomatic issue.
I mean, Russia has been doing this in their own way with Ukraine and Crimea. They've just been doing it in an extremely intelligent way - they not using conventional military force, they're using a combination of propaganda, green men, dissidents, funded rebels, social media warfare, and public rhetoric to try and absorb land "peacefully". It proved extremely effective in Crimea, and less-so in Ukraine, but it looks like a new, evolving face of "conquering" to me.
In general, I don't think the USA - unless there is a massively radical shift in our foreign policy stance (which might happen under Trump, but seems unlikely), is not going to go out overtly conquering anybody. I guess you could maybe say we did that in Iraq, although it's not clear we've gotten any tangible benefit from it, or how much influence we actually possess within their government. It's just not part of our grand strategy, as muddled and confused as it is, to go around conquering smaller nations. Otherwise we would've done so with nations in our immediate sphere of influence that we do not have control over, such as the Caribbean.
It would be much more in character for a China or Russia to do something overt of that nature if they thought they could get away with it. Considering basically no-one in the west did anything over Crimea (that I can recall; was the embargo of Russia over that business?), it's no wonder they've gotten emboldened in that regard. China knows not to fuck with the very close US allies in their area (primarily South Korea and Japan), but could probably do some bullying of their own on others if they were similarly smart like Russia was with Crimea.