system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
I don’t know man, a handful of merchants butch slapped the Chinese army, twice, and made it a crack den.

Said merchants literally took an island state from them that was only given back in the 1990’s, too..

China wasn’t taken over because nobody wanted to take it over. It was much more convenient to make it a client. The first time someone wanted it, they got turned into comfort women and soil fertilizer.
gpt
Now now, let's be honest here. Those "handful of merchants" were the Royal Navy post Industrialisation, at the absolute peak of British might. The Chinese had previously defeated the Dutch, Portuguese, and Russians already at this point, which was why they underestimated the British.

And only a few decades later, they recovered enough power to best the French army (and then lose horribly to the French *navy*).