Speaking of the Chinese civilization in general, we should mention its two unique features that define the Chinese mental picture of the world.First, it is cultural continuity throughout the history of the Chinese civilization: “China is almost the only country that gives an example of cultural development without radical destruction of the past in the name of the present” (Ezhov, 2004). Thus, many features of the Chinese mentality, psychology, and behavior determined in ancient times – for example, by philosophical views of great teachers of Taoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Buddhism, Mohism, natural philosophy, etc. – are fully present in modern Chinese consciousness, complementing and supporting the tenets of today's Chinese society expressed by the most prominent Chinese leaders and politicians of the second half of the 20th century–Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping.
Secondly, the Chinese civilization was historically formed on a particular geographically isolated territory: from the west, the nascent civilization was protected by massifs of impassable mountains and deserts and, from the east and southeast, the Chinese lands were surrounded by the seas of the Pacific Ocean, while the northern and northeastern lands represented by endless steppes and forests with a harsh inhospitable climate, were, for a long time, of no interest to the Chinese nation – there were enough territories on the south. Thus, all the ecumene known to the ancient Chinese, suitable for normal life, was already Chinese (Ul'ianenko).Until the 19th century, in the absence of competition with a strong rival, the Chinese civilization and Chinese empire will be the undeniable historical and cultural hegemon in the region.Starting from the era of the first Chinese states, the Chinese mindset reveals the idea of "zhōngguó" – the Middle State as the unconditional center of the universe, extending its power and cultural influence over all known neighboring peoples who were, just like in other great civilizations, contemptuously referred to as "barbarians", with a gradation from "semi-barbarians", i.e. those who were in the immediate sphere of Chinese influence, to "wild barbarians" – all other peoples. And "certain negative properties were attributed to barbarians: a barbarian was always an inferior person" (Smirnov, 2014). It was during the absolute domination of the Chinese state in all spheres over the neighbor countries and peoples that a clear sense of superiority was formed and consolidated in the Chinese mindset. It was a kind of "super-completeness" complex, which can be described as extremely persistent Chinese chauvinism, as far as all the history known to the Chinese before the 19th century only testified to the fact that the Chinese way of life, the Chinese worldview and the Chinese civilization in general were the only true and progressive path of development. Moreover, all the failures along this path, for example, the conquest of the Chinese territory by the less developed, in all respects, nomadic tribes of the Jurchen, Mongols, Manchus, etc., were considered by the Chinese only as exceptions provingthe rule, since the conquerors experienced the strongest assimilating influence of Chinese culture and turned into the Chinese.
A colossal blow to the Chinese sense of superiority over other peoples was inflicted in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, when a powerful, technically well-developed and economically advanced, superior in all spheres Western civilization represented by the British, later the French, Germans, Americans, Russians, and the Japanese who adopted the Western civilizational model, reached the borders of the weakening Chinese empire. The Qing Empire could not challenge this pressure and admitted its complete defeat, which further led to the fall of the last Chinese dynasty. The occupation of Chinese territories, the defeat of the Chinese army and people’s movements, the destruction of Chinese cultural sites, the extremely disdainful and even contemptuous attitude of the foreigners towardsthe Chinese population, towards the Chinese civilization itself, caused the Chinese nation to develop a persistent negative psychological fixation on these events, which continues to the present day. Particular rejection was caused by the fact that the interventionists included Japan, which, in a couple of decades, transformed from a medieval state into a powerful and active capitalist predator. Despite the victory of China in the "1937-1945 war against the Japanese invaders", the self-esteem of the Chinese nation was impossible to recover, since the end point in Japan's surrender was set by the WWII allies: the defeat of the Manchu Japanese forces by the Soviet Union and atomic bombing of Japanese cities by the United States.
It was not until October 1, 1949, the day of establishment of the People's Republic of China, when Mao Zedong announced a special Chinese path of development, the Chinese nation began to gradually return to the centuries-old Chinese-centric worldview.The successes of the Chinese reforms led to the restoration of chauvinistic sentiments, and the undoubted triumph of China in the modern world in almost all spheres of life, especially in the demonstratively successful solution of global challenges (for example, against Covid-19), raised the degree of Chinese chauvinism to the previous, old imperial, level.