MODERN China’s founding trauma came in 1842, when British troops pushed opium down the throats of a prostrate nation at the Treaty of Nanjing. Today this brutal military and diplomatic defeat is hailed in China for the way its darkness forced a new dawn.
Indeed, China celebrates defeat like other countries mark victories—and the humiliations of subsequent decades afford plenty of opportunities, with the once great empire carved up at the hands first of Europeans and then the Japanese. This grim past is central to the narrative of the ruling Communist Party. Without China’s legacy of humiliation, the party’s role in restoring fuqiang—wealth and power—would look less impressive.