The phrase "sick man of Asia" or "sick man of East Asia" originally referred to China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when it was riven by internal divisions and forced by the great powers into a series of Unequal Treaties, culminating in the Japanese invasion of China during World War II. The phrase was intended as a parallel to "sick man of Europe", referring to the weakening Ottoman Empire during the same period.
权威例句
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For China, once called the sickmanofAsia, those are big.
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Under his leadership the country has shed its image as the sickmanofAsia and has joined the ranks of the tiger economies: the economy grew by almost 6% last year.
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In the 19th century, Turkey was a European power (Nicholas I of Russia dubbed it the sickmanof Europe, not ofAsia).