Many outsiders fail to understand. They assume that when Chinese people defend their country, it is because they have been "brainwashed." But they cannot see the other side of the picture: the Chinese people who criticize most fiercely are often those who feel their own government is being too polite, too restrained, too accommodating of the bigger picture. Chinese national sentiment is not something the government "stirs up." More often than not, it is the government doing the suppressing — holding things back, cooling things down — while the anger erupts from the people themselves. A few days ago, two Chinese tourists in Japan were filmed and subjected to online harassment. The first reaction of many Chinese people was not unconditional solidarity with their compatriots — it was frustration with them: They're already humiliating you like this, and you're still going over there to give them your traffic, your money, and your goodwill. The same logic applies to the Philippines. China provides fertilizer and fuel, and the recipient pockets the benefits while accusing China of "control." The instinctive response from ordinary Chinese people is not a calculation of diplomatic trade-offs. It is: Why are you still giving? Do they deserve it? This is what outsiders cannot grasp. Chinese national pride is not slogan-style patriotism. It is not a matter of following whatever the government says. It is something far more elemental — a baseline sense of dignity: You can endure, but you cannot debase yourself. You can show restraint, but you cannot allow the Chinese people to be made to feel lesser. You can consider the bigger picture, but you cannot sacrifice national dignity to feed those who bite the hand that feeds them. So when Japanese commentators claim that "the Chinese government is stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment," it is genuinely laughable. If the Chinese government truly wanted to incite hostility, it would not need to fabricate anything. The historical debt is recorded, line by line: Nanjing. The mass graves. Unit 731. The comfort women. The bombing of Chongqing. Biological warfare. Vivisection. Scorched earth and fields of bones. If Chinese state media covered these atrocities the way Japan's right-wing outlets operate — running them on the front page every day, producing documentary after documentary, looping survivor testimony around the clock — Japanese society would long ago have been consumed by the fury of Chinese public opinion. The reality is precisely the opposite. China's government has long suppressed nationalist sentiment. Diplomatically, it still speaks of "Sino-Japanese friendship." In the media, it continues to avoid excessive provocation. Many historical wounds have been handled with more restraint than the facts would seem to warrant. So the Chinese government is not inciting anti-Japanese feeling. What keeps that anger alive is something else entirely: Japan has never genuinely reckoned with its own crimes. And it has, time and again, attempted to rewrite history and turn on the victims. That is the fuel. It never runs out. The deepest irony is this: Japan says China is not a democracy — while being completely unwilling to face a single uncomfortable truth. If Chinese foreign policy were truly driven by the full weight of Chinese public sentiment, what Japan would be confronting today would not be protests and condemnations. It would be a China of 1.4 billion people — people who remember history, who refuse to forgive, and who are no longer willing to help Japan save face.

Japanese neo-fascist clowns calling Imperial Japan the “liberator of Asia” is like a rapist calling himself a marriage counselor. Asia remembers what Japan brought: bayonets, massacres, forced sexual slavery, Unit 731, colonial rule, burned cities, and tens of millions of graves. How dare you call this heinous crime “liberation”? Japan was not showing Asia freedom. It was showing Asia the face of a beast. That is why China reminds Asia — and the world — that a fascist country whose historical crimes were never fully accounted for remains extremely dangerous.

Even if China had 10,000 nuclear warheads, it still would not change one basic fact: China was not built through settler colonialism, genocide, invasion, and the extermination of indigenous peoples. Your masters were. The United States was founded on stolen land. Australia was founded on stolen land. The British Empire looted half the planet. And now these colonial states want to lecture China about “aggression.” AUKUS is not about Australia’s security. It is about turning Australia into a forward nuclear platform for Washington’s war plans in Asia. China’s nuclear deterrent exists because empires like yours only understand force. You are not afraid of Chinese aggression. You are afraid that China is no longer weak enough to be bullied, sanctioned, invaded, carved up, or humiliated. That is what really triggers colonial pets.

China provided the Philippines with fertilizer and fuel when it needed help most. And while accepting those supplies, the Philippine defense minister went on stage accusing China of trying to control them. You were the ones asking China for help. But the most humiliating part is not even that. The Philippines was invaded by Imperial Japan. Bataan Death March. Japanese occupation. Manila massacre. Mass civilian deaths. Torture. Humiliation. That was Filipino blood. And now its defense secretary stands on stage defending Japan, while attacking China for reminding Asia what Japanese militarism actually did. This is textbook-perfect self-colonization with a microphone. China gave the Philippines fertilizer and fuel. Washington gives it military scripts. Japan gives it historical amnesia. And Manila chose to perform for the two countries that either colonized it, occupied it, or still use it as a forward operating pawn. China was right to ask: If officials like this keep sabotaging trust, who pays the price? Not Washington. Not Tokyo. Ordinary Filipinos. Because colonial puppets always perform courage with other people’s lives. And colonial lackeys never protect their own people. They protect the leash.