While it was hyperbole, my criteria is what I described right after- western Europe (with Ireland as the exception) and the Anglosphere have never moved past the culture of loot and plunder. Furthermore, I’d argue the white west has by and large not moved past the exclusionary concept of the ethno-state- or the white settler-state in the Anglosphere’s case- unlike real civilizations, from that of the Chinese, Soviet/post-Soviet and Orthodox, Indian (however problematic Hindutva presently is), Islamic, etc.

I have a bias here and this is still at least partly hyperbole, but western Europe and the Anglosphere in particular strike me as the pinnacle of genuine barbarism (unlike their unfounded claims against the global south)- these societies are founded and sustained on theft, the settler-societies in particular representing if anything the destruction of actual, indigenous civilization- they are squatters, genocidaires, and essentially the national equivalent of roving bands of murderous bandits, not anything that should be considered civilization, but rather the antithesis of it (though New Zealand arguably might be close to it due to indigenization).

As I see it, if we’re to use the word (which granted, has its own baggage and is rather problematic) actual civilization is indigenous- it is more than just the ethno-state, or a state based on a racial hierarchy, and it is independent, in the sense that it is not founded on or reliant on theft and genocide. The modern west by-and-large is if anything less civilized, than western Europe might have been 500-600 years ago before they ever started terrorizing the rest of the world IMO.

Do you have any understanding of Chinese history before reform and opening up?