In the late nineteenth century, a conviction that China was somehow weaker than other political states in Asia and the West spread across the nation. Responses to this dispiriting notion manifested themselves in cultural and political forms, affecting such disparate arenas as popular writing and national resource mobilization. This book shows how, more than a century later, modern China has yet to fully shake the idea of weakness, arguing that the country’s Communist leadership relies on this trope to shore up their popularity when they position themselves as the only defense against national humiliation.