I'm currently reading Three Daughters of Madame Liang by Pearl S. Buck, a novel with a setting in Mao's China. Here are some excerpts from the book which I find enlightening. 

"Through our thousands of years our weakness has been in our pride. We believed and do still believe that we are the superior race, the best people. We grew accustomed through centuries, and with reason, to being the first nation in the world, our civilization above that of any other. We became the most ancient of days. While other people rose and died and nations flourished and passed away, our nation and our people continued upon the earth, the center of all. We knew this, and the knowing of it, the certainty of it, has been our undoing. We could not believe that the time has arrived for us to change, because a new power has come to mankind. It is the power of science, first manifested to us in new weapons. (...) This science was our undoing, and all the wisdom of Confucius could not save us." 

"Tell me, did you hear Americans say why they will not have us in their United Nations?"
(...) "M-ma, it was because they think we are an aggressor nation."
Madame Liang was shocked. "We? An aggressor nation? But we have fought no aggressive wars in two thousand years!"
"It was because of Korea, M-ma. We sent a volunteer army."
"But that was our duty! Korea is one of our tributary nations and has been for many centuries. It was our responsibility, always, to send a volunteer army if any of our tributary nations was attacked by a foreign power."
"M-ma, they don't know that."
"Do they not read our history?"
"No, M-ma. I don't think so."