China has a superiority complex made perversely more intense by their inferiority, no? The ruler of China may embody that conflict:
The emperor was, instead, considered the superior of all other rulers and realms, and he expected their representatives to pay him obeisance. An inflated self-image of national exceptionalism is hardly unique to China, and official ideology did not prevent China from interacting with other neighboring nations in practice. Neighboring monarchs consciously styled themselves as emperors in order to place themselves on par with the Chinese emperor. But the size and customary dominance of China over its region from ancient times through the end of the 18th century gave substance to the empire’s view of itself as the “Middle Kingdom.” ...
The 19th century changed all that. Explosive population growth over the preceding four centuries — China had six times as many people by 1800 as it had had in 1400 — strained the empire’s supply of arable farmland, increasing the frequency of peasant revolts. In another era, that might have set the stage for an ordinary change of dynasties. Instead, what followed was a traumatic external shock: the defeat of China by Britain in the First Opium War of 1839–42. China had long been open to European trade, and European commerce was a regular presence for four centuries before 1839 — but always on China’s own terms.
This was different. The Industrial Revolution, and in particular the ability of steamboats to project naval firepower upriver, led to a massive and destabilizing growth in Western military superiority by the late 1830s. A comparatively small military force from an island halfway around the world proved more than equal to defeating the vast Qing Empire and imposing on it both unequal trade terms and territorial concessions, including the loss of Hong Kong.
And consider how China with its long history of imperial grandeur must view America. We were a blip on the world stage in the early 19th century and by the 20th spanned the globe with out power. I mean, WTF? That had to hurt.
So yeah, history weighs on China. They got used to being number one and really don't like the number two spot. Xi taps into that desire for rebirth.
And given what they assumed was their due as number one, we should not want them to reclaim that spot.
Although I think Russia has more to worry about in the short run.
