I wouldn't say that. I would argue this is a lot more like the WW1 relationship to WW2. The events are related to how the Chinese leadership feels pressure from their public to perform and stand up to adversaries.

In short, China's leadership today has pressure to right historical wrongs. We, as Westerners, should work to understand them so that we can make sense of their behavior as a nation state.

China has two major historical enemies with wrongs that the leadership can stand up to:

(1) The UK for the opium wars (and the 100 year fallout).

(2) Japan for WW2 (and, you know, the whole genocide / killing babies for sport thing).

When the CCP does anything involving these two nations, you can always assume the history and the pressure on the leadership is a factor.