In my recent review of Xi Jinping’s five-volume The Governance of China, I argued that Western readers often misunderstand what sort of books they are. They are usually treated as collections of Communist Party speeches or as attempts to justify the continued rule of the Party. They are certainly both of those things. Yet that is not what gives them their coherence. Read carefully enough, one discovers that almost every chapter is concerned with a single historical question: how did one of the world’s oldest civilisations become so weak that foreign powers could dictate its future?

That question leads naturally to another, and one that deserves an article of its own. What does Xi Jinping think about Britain? The obvious answer is that he dislikes the British Empire. That answer is true, but it is also incomplete. Xi regards the Opium Wars as a great injustice. The destruction of the Summer Palace, the unequal treaties, the seizure of Hong Kong and the long succession of foreign concessions, all occupy a central place in the Chinese understanding of modern history. They form the opening chapters of what Chinese schoolchildren know as the 百年国耻—the Century of National Humiliation. No Chinese leader could think otherwise.

Yet after working through these volumes, I found myself struck by something that Western commentary almost never mentions. Xi Jinping’s harshest criticism is directed not at Britain but at China. This may sound surprising until one notices where the emphasis repeatedly falls. Xi seldom asks why Britain behaved as it did. He asks why China had become incapable of preventing Britain from behaving as it did. The distinction is subtle, but it changes the whole structure of his historical argument.

Throughout The Governance of China one encounters variations on the same warning:

落后就要挨打。

“If you fall behind, you will be beaten.”

This is one of those Chinese expressions whose implications are much greater than its length suggests. It is not merely an observation about nineteenth-century history. It is the organising principle of Xi Jinping’s understanding of international politics. Military weakness, technological backwardness, administrative corruption, economic dependence and political disunity are not simply unfortunate conditions. They invite domination. They tempt stronger powers to intervene. The first responsibility of any government is therefore to ensure that such conditions never arise.

Notice, however, where responsibility is located. The sentence does not read, “Strong countries ought not to bully weaker ones.” Nor does it lament the inherent injustice of international politics. Instead, it identifies weakness itself as the primary political failure. Britain won because Britain was stronger. China’s humiliation became possible because China had ceased to be strong enough to prevent it.

The logic is austere. It is also close to the political realism one encounters in Thucydides. In the Melian Dialogue, the Athenians tell the people of Melos that “the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.” Whether Xi consciously adopts that tradition is beside the point. The resemblance is unmistakable. The world described in The Governance of China is not governed primarily by sentiment. It is governed by capability. States may speak the language of justice, but they possess only the freedom that their own strength permits.

This observation also helps to explain why the five volumes range over such an extraordinary variety of subjects. Xi discusses semiconductor production, artificial intelligence, agricultural reform, anti-corruption campaigns, educational standards, Party discipline, scientific research, environmental protection, financial stability, military modernisation and cultural confidence. Read superficially, these appear to be separate policy initiatives united only by the fact that Xi Jinping happens to support them all. Read historically, however, they become parts of a single argument. Every chapter asks the same underlying question: how can China ensure that it never again becomes the sort of country that stronger powers are able to intimidate?

The Century of Humiliation is therefore not one theme among many. It is the lens through which Xi views almost everything else. Marxism supplies much of the economic vocabulary. Leninism provides the institutional framework. The emotional centre of the project is something older and more enduring: the determination that China should never again experience the collapse that began in 1839. Once this is recognised, Britain’s place in Xi Jinping’s historical imagination begins to look different from the one often assumed in the West.

British discussions of the Opium Wars are usually conducted in moral language. We ask whether Britain was justified, whether the opium trade was defensible, whether imperial expansion can ever be reconciled with liberal principles, and what obligations modern Britain owes to those who suffered under empire. These are legitimate questions, and Xi Jinping would answer the last differently from the Libertarian Alliance consensus. Yet they are not the questions that appear to interest him most. Xi is much more interested in understanding why Britain possessed the capacity to win.

That distinction is fundamental. Moral judgement explains why something should not have happened. It does not explain why it did happen. Xi’s concern lies with the second question. Britain is not presented as a uniquely wicked civilisation. It is presented as an exceptionally capable one. Its scientific achievement, industrial productivity, naval power, administrative competence and technological superiority enabled it to impose its will on a Qing Empire that had fallen behind in almost every field that ultimately determined military and political success.

To describe Victorian Britain as one of Xi Jinping’s teachers may seem paradoxical, but it is difficult to avoid that conclusion. He plainly does not admire what Britain did with its power, yet the entire programme of national rejuvenation rests on understanding why Britain possessed strengths that Qing China lacked. Every discussion of technological independence, scientific research, educational reform or advanced manufacturing carries within it an implicit historical comparison. Britain became strong because it mastered these things. China became weak because, for too long, it did not.

This explains why Xi’s account of the nineteenth century is more self-critical than many Western readers appreciate. Foreign powers undoubtedly exploited China, but they exploited weaknesses that had accumulated over many decades. Responsibility therefore begins at home. Throughout The Governance of China, corruption, complacency, bureaucratic inertia, technological backwardness and political indiscipline are treated not as domestic shortcomings but as historical dangers. They are the conditions under which foreign domination becomes possible.

There is something Confucian about this way of thinking. Before condemning the conduct of others, one first asks whether one’s own house was in order. Before demanding justice abroad, one examines the quality of government at home. The repeated insistence on discipline, educational excellence and administrative competence is not authoritarian reflex. It reflects the conviction that civilisations usually decay from within before they are defeated from without. In this respect, Xi’s political philosophy often sounds less like Marx than like a modern statesman drawing on a much older Chinese tradition of statecraft.

There is, however, another implication that deserves attention. China still studies Britain, but not for the reasons it once did. During the nineteenth century Britain was impossible for China to ignore because Britain possessed the power to reshape China’s future. It represented the most advanced industrial civilisation in the world and demonstrated, with brutal clarity, what happened when technological leadership and military power became concentrated in one nation while another rested on inherited prestige. Britain was therefore both conqueror and instructor. It revealed, however painfully, the consequences of national stagnation.

That lesson has now largely been learnt. When Xi discusses the future, his principal strategic concern is no longer Britain but the United States. It is American technology, American finance, American military alliances and American export controls that occupy the attention once devoted to Britain. Britain’s historical importance remains immense, but its strategic importance has diminished.

That fact ought to provoke some reflection in Britain itself. China no longer studies Britain in order to discover how Britain became powerful. It studies Britain increasingly as an example of how a civilisation that once possessed extraordinary advantages can lose them. The question has changed. Instead of asking why Britain rose, Chinese observers are now able to ask why Britain appears to have lost so much of the confidence that once distinguished it.

This is not, I think, a source of satisfaction for Xi Jinping. There is little triumphalism in his treatment of Britain. Nor does he indulge in fantasies of historical revenge. Britain has become something more useful than an enemy. It has become an historical case study.

This brings us to the final irony. Modern Britain often appears to believe that international respect is earned through expressions of historical remorse. We apologise for empire, re-examine our national story, and devote increasing attention to the arguable moral failures of previous generations. There is value in honest historical reflection. Nations that refuse to confront their own injustices rarely understand themselves very well. Yet there is little evidence in Xi Jinping’s writings that respect is acquired in this way.

Respect, in his historical philosophy, is earned through capability. Nations command attention because they govern themselves competently, educate their citizens well, encourage scientific innovation, maintain economic resilience and possess sufficient confidence to determine their own future. Those were the qualities that once made Britain formidable. They are also the qualities Xi wishes China to cultivate.

This does not mean that Xi admires the British Empire, still less that he wishes China to imitate it. Respect and approval are different things. One may condemn the purposes for which power is used while recognising the qualities that made such power possible. Indeed, that distinction lies at the heart of Xi’s interpretation of the nineteenth century. Britain’s conduct was unjust. Britain’s capability was undeniable. The misfortune, from his perspective, was that China had allowed itself to become too weak to resist.

If this reading is broadly correct, it carries an uncomfortable implication for Britain today. China is unlikely to think more highly of Britain because Britain has become poorer and less confident than it once was. Historical guilt is not, in Xi’s world, a substitute for national competence. On the contrary, a Britain that recovered its scientific ambition, industrial strength, educational seriousness and administrative confidence would probably command greater respect in Beijing than one preoccupied chiefly with managing decline and apologising for its past.

The greatest irony of the Century of Humiliation may therefore be this. China has spent nearly two centuries studying the sources of Britain’s strength, determined never again to suffer the consequences of weakness. Britain, meanwhile, often seems less interested in understanding the qualities that made it formidable than in cataloguing the moral failures that accompanied its success. Xi Jinping’s writings suggest that history judges nations differently. They are respected not because they are flawless, but because they possess the discipline and the general competence to shape their own destiny.