There is no Qing emperor to blame anymore for allowing China to stagnate and losing the Opium Wars. Meanwhile, the same governments who used forced projection to coerce China into allowing the import of Opium are continuing to abuse force projection to this day.
They are only the same governments insofar as there have been no total revolutions. The people, laws, morals, and even constitution in the UK are different today than during the opium wars. Probably as much so as the CCP differs from the Qing.
The governments may have changed to a certain degree but not when it comes to geopolitics. It took CCP two years to figure out that bad agricultural science was bad. How many wars will it take for Americans to factor the impact of asymmetric warfare on residents into their calculus of whether to go to war?
