Memes

By "formal," you mean a strictly Leninist definition, predicated on capital export and proletarianization. But reducing imperialism to an oversimplified template ignores the more broad, foundational definition: the forced imposition of sovereign control over a another polity.

The claim that Tibet was "always part of China" relies on a distorted view of the Cho-Yon (priest-patron) relationship with the Mongol and Manchu (Qing) empires. Neither empire was ethnically Han Chinese, and Tibet maintained its own legal, currency, and administrative systems.

When the Qing fell in 1912, Tibet declared de facto independence, existing as a sovereign state for four decades.

In 1950, the PLA invaded. While the state retained nominal land ownership, the subsequent collectivization, destruction of monastic institutions, and systematic dilution of Tibetan demographics through Han migration are classic hallmarks of settler-colonial expansion regardless of whether it fits a specific macroeconomic conceptualization.