Opium wars, Japanese occupation, US Chinese exclusion act, etc. China was bullied. The extant generation of Chinese has not directly experienced most of it, but it's not just a chip on the shoulder.

I think claiming the whole south china sea is ridiculous because there's no principle behind it. A coastal EEZ is a principle, but if China can claim the south china sea why can't Vietnam?

I also struggle to formulate a strong argument against claiming and developing an uninhabited reef. China is by no means the only country participating in the spratly islands land grab, and to my knowledge no country has ever shied away from claiming uninhabited land. International Maritime law was not formulated to deal with this situation. I think China's neighbors will more likely than not be able to maintain their reasonable Maritime rights. If not, I think China will find wanton domination to be more trouble than it's worth.

Japan occupied many countries during WW2, it's only the CCP that still cares to the extent that they do about it. In fact in many of the countries that Japan occupied there is now strong pro-Japan sentiment, but not China.

The US Chinese exclusion act can not be termed "bullying of China" as it was explicitly about internal US politics rather than international politics. If that is termed bullying of a country then any anti-immigration law throughout history would be bullying of some country or another.

I'm not entirely understanding your position here. The series of "Unequal Treaties" [1] China regularly refers to are not imaginary. It started with the Opium Wars. These were a series of two wars in which the Brits insisted on selling opium in China, which had banned the trade. When China tried to stop opium ships, Britain invaded, plundered China, and forced them into a series of somewhat humiliating concessions.

Among these concessions was Britain claiming Hong Kong for themselves (which was only returned in 1997). Interestingly enough this happened twice! The legality of the opium was not completely clarified in the first war. After the second war the Brits forced China to legally accept their opium. And it just gets more sordid from there, with various "Unequal Treaties" continuing onward into the 20th century.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Unequal_treaty

Those treaties and the end of them long pre-date the CCP. There is no one alive today that was around during that time period. That they are still talked about is part of the internal propaganda of the CCP to propagate the idea that the world is out to get them.

Also, if they were so important to the Chinese people then they would still be talked about strongly in Taiwan which has a shared history going back to then and, as far as I know, they don't care nearly as much about it as the people living under the CCP.

> Among these concessions was Britain claiming Hong Kong for themselves (which was only returned in 1997).

Much to the dislike of the people actually living in Hong Kong. They would have preferred to never go back to being part of being China. This is another great example of CCP/Chinese aggression and colonialism against the world as opposed to their supposed persecution complex.

To imagine history, and all of its consequences, dies with one generation is a view you obviously do not hold. And so I do not believe you are arguing in good faith. I'm not doing this to 'mic drop' because I'm more than happy to continue this discussion, but because I think you yourself might not even be thinking about what you're saying - rather than just shooting, somewhat wildly, from the hip.

The consequences have lasting effects of course, but to assume that current governments maintain those same policies from hundreds of years ago is ridiculous. China should take an example from the US, our former enemies are now some of our strongest allies (Japan and Germany), or at the minimum have strongly endorsed our culture (Vietnam). It happens by not holding grudges, as China is fond to do.

If you believe much has changed, I would encourage you to look to the Mideast. Millions of dead bodies and countless destroyed governments are testament to the fact that opposing Western interests is like to be met with the bombs wrapped in slogans of freedom, human rights, and democracy.

Of course the Mideast is largely unable to speak for itself because their culture, religion, and language leave them culturally isolated from the West. In many ways our treatment of the Mideast today, and their situation, is directly analogous to how we treated China in the past and the situation they were in. So I would argue what has changed has not been our behavior, but China's ability to defend itself.

And now we take the standard Chinese propaganist route of re-directing the argument away from Asia and to the middle east whenever a complicated issue of Asian geopolitics with regards to the US happens. It's become a good benchmark for when someone is arguing in bad faith when they start reciting CCP talking points with near identical wording every time certain subjects come up.

Also, China will repeat the same missteps of the US in the middle east as soon as their first major interruption of fossil fuels happens. China is not immune.

Your argument was that the West has changed, and China claiming we haven't is wrong. The Mideast rather strongly supports the Chinese view, and so far as I can tell - there's not really much to oppose it. As for propaganda, during the Cold War we engaged in extensive propaganda. That included things like imagery of stocked grocery store shelves. That those things were used as propaganda did not mean that they did not exist, or were somehow inherently false.

The Opium wars ended 163 years ago.

It's long since time to move on.

China itself has committed many horrific crimes during that time.