After that, China was dismembered, first by the European powers, then, more devastatingly, by Japan. Chinese troops expelled the Japanese, and the country was reunified more than 60 years ago. But it is determined to keep the memory of the abuses it suffered from fading into history.
Shame often acts as a depressant. But through the 11 biographical sketches in their book, Schell and Delury argue that for generations of influential Chinese, shame has been a stimulant. The evidence is not hard to find. The inaugural exhibition at the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square, splashily reopened in 2011, treated the Opium War as the founding event of modern China, telling a Disneyesque version of how the Communist Party restored the country’s greatness. At the museum of the Temple of Tranquil Seas in Nanjing, the site of the signing of one of the most unequal of China’s treaties with foreign powers, is inscribed this phrase: “To feel shame is to approach courage.” Humiliation has been a staple of Communist Party propaganda.