What imperial bullies? The biggest empires in the history were European and usually they were the bully… What is even that comment.
In this case, China is quite clearly the imperial bully.
Some people could have made mistakes as a teenager. How they are now is more important, humans ( normally ) learn from mistakes.
Same for countries, Europe has changed a lot over the years/decades/centuries.
Because of advancements in technologies enabling global communication, the success is now mostly based on trade and not on war/conquer like in the past. People keep forgetting that it really is a different world compared to 1600.
Different sources I can find have between 4 and 5 of the top 10 as European, the rest Asian, and pretty consistently have them alternating the top 4.
There are a lot of countries in Europe. Most of them were not bullies or, at least, were far less bullies than their neighbors: Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Romania, ...
Even some of the big empires (e.g.: Netherlands, Belgium) actually went through the experience of being bullied.
Portugal is small now but it's history is a bit bloody.