I think the port (and even just railways) argument is a little poor, imperialists absolutely build big and good ports so they can efficiently extract a country’s resources, and use railways to connect the inland mines and what not to the ports. Basically, both China and the west have built railways in the global south, but the real difference comes from when you look at a map of the railways built: the west has always built railways nearly exclusively from inland at the locations of mining towns and towns located near other valuable resources to heighten the efficiency of their resource extraction but China builds railroads from inland city to inland city and from port to port, making internal economic development easier and easier for the country.

Recently, I really enjoyed the scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. Had anti capitalist themes and cool world building. main character can be a little polaraizing though, she can be “b wordy” for lack of a better less misogynistic term coming to mind, I’ve seen some talk about how much they hated her character and others how much they loved her (I personally loved her)

as an aside, https://annas-archive.org/ is your friend for getting books for free!

fund communist parties in the global south