Watching television coverage of the "Quad" (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) leaders virtual meeting from the Chinese media last week, you would have been exposed to a host of expressions frequently used by television readers and commentators. For example, “Cold War mentality,” “anti-Chinese alliance,” “clique of countries aimed at China” are common phrases.

They typically describe states like Japan and Australia as having no strategic autonomy vis-a-vis the United States and that somehow, they are strong-armed into taking an anti-China stance. Depictions of India are even more condescending, despite India’s strong working relationships with many states and its soft power.

The fact that some Western media sources also used the terminology of an anti-Chinese alliance to describe the Quad is also problematic. It re-enforces a Chinese narrative propagated by the Communist Party that the West is out to get China and prevent its peaceful development. These are ideas that strongly elicit memories of the “century of humiliation,” an ethno-nationalist lodestone that most ordinary Chinese can relate to, for real and cultivated reasons.