Historians who have studied the decline and fall of great modern empires must be queasy these days.
Many have chronicled how a once mighty China lost its sovereignty to colonial powers during the early years of the 20th Century. Their enfeebled empress and a humbled military were swept aside by a European coalition of nations only to find that China was to become the bloody prize of Japanese generals whose forces raped and massacred their way to Beijing.
The West may not remember this “sideshow” of World War II and many Japanese still decline to acknowledge their legacy, but the Chinese remember.
