ALMOST a hundred years to the day that China suffered its biggest humiliation in 1919, US President Trump wanted to force China to sign a trade agreement couched in a language that to the Chinese side displays “disrespect to China’s sovereignty and dignity.” That incident of exactly a century ago was the May 4th Movement (May 4, 1919) when students in Beijing gathered at Tien An Men Square to protest the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War 1, wherein Shandong province was handed over to Japan from the defeated Germans who held the territory previously. The students protested because of the shameful manner by which the Chinese leaders at the time allowed their nation to be bullied and shamed by Japan and the Western powers (UK, France and US). The May 4th Movement was a precursor of the Chinese nationalism that gradually spread throughout China, culminating in the ouster of all foreign colonizers, except from Hong Kong and Macau, in October 1949.