China has the power to be what Japan was through the 1930s. Turnabout might be fair play, but it doesn’t make for very nice international conditions.
Japan was with the Allies in WWI. The Japanese navy escorted Australian troops in the Pacific.
Japan was rated as giving the best treatment to prisoners of war during the Siberia Incursion (after the Russian revolution). The US came in second.
During the 1930s, Japan ran a high fever and went fanatic.
But that was not always the case; nor need it be the case again.