Letters | China’s ‘century of humiliation’ narrative does not quite hold up any more

China has seen too many triumphs in the last century for it to stress past affronts

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Visitors at the ruins of the old summer palace in Beijing that was burned by British and French soldiers during the second opium war. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:15am, 5 Jun 2019Updated: 5:49am, 5 Jun 2019

The “three bows and nine taps of the forehead to the ground” (三跪九叩) before the emperor were long a court ritual imposed on foreign visitors to imperial China. But when, I would ask Mr Leslie Fong, did any Chinese ruler ever bend the knee to a foreigner? (“Trump’s biggest mistake: not realising China will never genuflect again”, June 1.)

Every country, China included, has some xenophobic mythology. Scholars of China have spent a good century exploding its sometimes politically useful myth of humiliation, from the non-existent “no dogs and Chinese” sign to the opium wars, which were likely to have been partly of internal origin.

China, Japan and Thailand are the only Asian countries that have never been fully colonised. A true reading of China’s last century and a half is quite positive, not least its finest hour when it fought the Japanese to a standstill. I am deeply discouraged that the discredited narrative of humiliation, so dismissive of major Chinese accomplishments, seems still to be believed by a well-educated writer such as Mr Fong.

Arthur Waldron, professor of international relations, University of Pennsylvania