ahonra

The PRC government’s position is that the Qing dynasty was corrupt and mismanaged China, which is why the West had the opportunity to loot. You frame this as if only the West has agency and China has none. In the 19th century, both China and the West had agency. The Qing screwed up, China became weak, and that is how the West got the opportunity to loot. If the Qing had not screwed up, it wouldn't have mattered what the West's intentions were at the time. Your framing of the situation is insulting to the Chinese because you assume whether China is great or not depends on the mercy of the West. As President Xi Jinping said in Hong Kong in 2017: "The destiny of Hong Kong has always been intricately bound with that of the motherland. After modern times, with a weak China under corrupt and incompetent feudal rule, the Chinese nation was plunged into deep suffering. In the early 1840s, Britain sent an expeditionary force of a mere 10,000 troops to invade China and got its way in forcing the Qing government, which had an 800,000-strong army, to pay reparations and cede the island of Hong Kong to it. After the Opium War, China was repeatedly defeated by countries which were far smaller in size and population." The Qing caused China to become weak first, and only then was Britain able to attack. Your philosophy is wrong if your starting premise is that only the West has agency.