There is a tipping point in national economies when the only two options are either a mass impoverishment of your whole population or war.
Germany in the late 1930's and some say China now. I'm not sure on the later but certainly feels like the whole world is in a proxy war in some form between the US and China for hegemony.
For China to avoid impoverishment it needs to take a share of US global wealth extraction, which naturally the US is not going to yield.

For what it's worth, wealthy nations, and their citizens, do not openly acknowledge how they became wealthy.