The topic was actually the US violating international law. Your comment was, paraphrased “but what about China violating international law?!”, which is literally exactly the context under which the word whataboutism was coined - when the US accused the USSR of doing bad things and the USSR called out the hypocrisy of the US, the anglosphere coined the term whataboutism.

It’s literally the definition.

There are much better ironies than China causing the US of violating international law, chief among them is the US accusing China of violating international law, because the US has been doing for far longer and in far more brutal ways than China ever has.

Yes, pointing out hypocrisy is literally whataboutism when you are using is to distract from the crimes of the empire. The reality is that everyone, including countries that have violated international law, should be condemning the US for what it’s doing and whether or not the condemners have violated international law is irrelevant and serves to minimize the topic at hand, which is the US seizing oil, and to advance sinophobic narratives, and to draw false equivalencies between horrible acts of murder, war crimes, piracy on the one hand and mild harassment on the other.

Ultimately, the greatest irony here is Westoids like you believing your opinions are well informed and not subject to foreign manipulation while being the most propagandized people in the planet.