Short term memory loss on the part of China.
An interesting snippet here about how China wallows in misery and demands more respect.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20130412.aspx
Sadly, this is strikingly similar to what many of our own politicians use for tactics...but I digress.
We shouldn't poo-poo this though. This is a very real problem that we encountered with Germany. In the 1920s and 1930s, German politicians, including Hitler, used scapegoating and references to oppression of the German people to capture political power, eventually bringing all of Europe into World War 2, which ultimately killed about 2.5% of the worlds population (rolling in war casualties, Holocaust, Russians killing their own people, etc.).
It required a massive rebuilding effort after the war, and ultimately the changing of attitudes in Germany and Japan to prevent another World War from happening. A great book to read on this is The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny, which goes in depth into American efforts to keep Berlin supplied during the Berlin Airlift. It specifically follows the story of Gail Halvorsen, who started dropping candy (with parachutes attached) from his airplane while he was bringing in supplies. The effect that something that simple had on German-American relationships cannot be overstated.
Unlike what the pundits may say, countries are made up of human beings, and have very real human emotions and thoughts that cannot be modeled by a computer. We should take these into consideration with China before it blows up in our face.
