An old pestilence has accompanied the spread of the new coronavirus in the United States: Sinophobia. President Donald Trump, who until recently insisted on calling the disease the “ Chinese virus,” and Republican politicians with their puns (“Kung Flu”) haven’t been above stoking racial prejudice. Many Asian-Americans born in or long resident in the U.S. have been brutally reminded of their “foreign” ancestry.

Ironically, this wave of Sinophobia could help consolidate what is proving to be the most successful nationalism of the modern era.

What those hurling racist abuse at China and the Chinese (and people who merely “look” Chinese) may not realize is that the plight of Chinese people abroad has always been central to the development of a Chinese nationalist consciousness. The Chinese goal of becoming a globally respected nation-state emerged out of the experience of defeat and humiliation by Western powers in the 19th century—but also the racial prejudice endured by millions of Chinese migrant laborers who left home in the first hectic phase of globalization.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and acts of violence against Chinese immigrants in the U.S. helped crystallize a collective Chinese identity in the 19th century—one able to overcome the many deep differences of region, language and class that existed within China itself at the time.

This unique trauma of being scorned and despised abroad as well as humbled at home explains why, since that time, China has pursued with such remarkable single-mindedness the goal of national development; why it has paid such a steep human cost for economic modernization and political centralization; why every kind of Chinese leader, from the reformists of the late Qing dynasty through Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to President Xi Jinping, has sought legitimacy by invoking the shared Chinese dream of a strong and assertive China.

The blast of spiteful racism emanating from the U.S. is likely to strengthen this collective identity even further. And China’s newfound international prestige may make it even more intransigent, strengthening Xi’s position.

However skeptical the world rightfully remains about China’s handling of its own coronavirus outbreak and whether the scourge has been successfully defeated on the mainland, the fact is that Chinese leaders now feel confident enough about conditions at home to dispatch doctors, quarantine specialists and medical supplies to Europe as well as poor countries such as Pakistan and Ethiopia.

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio recently streamed on Facebook a video of Chinese Samaritans in face masks descending the steps of a plane. The Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic, who last week assailed the European Union for lacking “solidarity,” may prove to be the first of many Western leaders to hail China as “the only country that can help us now.”

“Thank you, I love you China!” Serbian tennis champion Novak Djokovic announced on Twitter. Even oil-rich Norway, which can tap the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has solicited Beijing's support.

As private Chinese companies, including U.S.-ostracized Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., join Beijing in channeling assistance to stricken countries, Xi’s “Health Silk Road” looks more more likely to secure international goodwill for China than his Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

Regardless of what one thinks of the Soviet Union, its deep industrial capacity and physical resilience was arguably what wore down the Nazi machinery of death and destruction. Similarly, even to many democracies, communist-ruled China now appears best-positioned to lead a broader war against a more insidious enemy. China’s well-organized state can credibly tout its abilities—in technocratic governance, as well as surveillance and coercion—to fight off a contagion. Meanwhile the U.S., the world’s richest country, struggles with an acute shortage of 75-cent face masks.

To many Chinese people, the pleas for help emanating from different parts of the world supremely vindicate their long effort to be seen, as Mao put it at the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, as a “great, courageous and industrious nation,” which had been suppressed in “modern times” by foreigners.

Whatever the U.S. looks like after the worst of the coronavirus has passed, its national self-confidence will take a long time to recover. Meanwhile, China's early liberation from the calamity, while its former tormentors and rivals have floundered, could prove to be the greatest-ever boost to Chinese amour propre. Like no other event, it may cement the long-growing conviction among many Chinese people that they have, as Mao promised, “stood up.”