FACT: China Has Never Gotten Over Its Defeat To Japan 125 Years Ago

Communist officialdom is less eager to trumpet that one. That’s because September 17, 1894 was a dark day for dynastic China. A Japanese fleet cobbled together from secondhand boilers and other components with foreign help crushed the Qing Dynasty’s Beiyang (Northern) Fleet off the Korean west coast. Naval experts of the day rated the Qing force superior to its opponent, so the encounter administered a rude shock all around. In fact, defeat at the Battle of the Yalu is central to China’s “century of humiliation.”