Yes, it appears that some people in Chinese academia and government are first trying to incrementally absorb the nations of people who look like them. Some in China have even said that Japan should be part of China, because Japanese people left China to populate Japan long ago.
And the way some people there see it, “the Yellow River runs out to the sea” (much historical symbolism with many folk stories behind it). And so with Chinese influence. It’s part of a train of thought about past domination of China by western nations and a desire to do something similar with the West and the world. It’s a concept similar to fairness in their thinking. There is something similar to a superior race and/or superior culture line of thought there.
Racism in China is often more subtle than most people in the West imagine. It’s different. It’s much more hidden in plain sight than in the West, if you can imagine that.
That sounds exactly like what Russians try to do with their attempts at expanding territory.
Forcefully move in thousands of Russian peasants into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Kaliningrad, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and so forth.
Then claim that their people are being mistreated as a pretense for invasion.