This determination to fight to the end is both rooted in China's recent history and in concern for its future. Since the Chinese Communist party turned its guns on protesting students in Tiananmen in 1989, its propaganda has drummed the idea of a "century of humiliation" into generations of Chinese citizens.

The term is shorthand for the period between the first Opium war (1839-1842) and 1949, when the Communist party won China's civil war. It was a period in which western imperial powers forced the ailing Qing dynasty to make concessions on trade and extraterritorial rights, followed by the collapse of the imperial dynasty and the invasion of China by Japan.

Since 1989, the "century of humiliation" has been central to the CCP's message of aggrieved nationalism, and the promise to its citizens that the party would make China so rich and powerful that it would never again be bullied by foreign powers.