4 ideas
Tang Yuanbao, a meek Beijing pedicab driver, is discovered to descend from a Boxer Rebellion martial-arts lineage. A self-appointed committee of hustlers and bureaucrats seizes on him to avenge China's historical humiliations at an international contest.
A national identity built on avenging past humiliation stays organized around that humiliation, so the push to prove strength ends up rehearsing and performing weakness. Victory gets redefined as the ability to endure degradation, and the capacity to suffer becomes the thing a nation displays with pride. The avenger ends up re-enacting the original subjugation with more enthusiasm than the oppressor ever demanded.
Read grand collective campaigns by asking who organizes them and what those organizers gain. In the novel, the people running the 'national' project are opportunists who use official jargon, committees, and slogans to secure funding, status, and meals. The ideological language is sincere in form but works as cover for careerism, and the more lofty the rhetoric, the easier the grift.
When a person is chosen to carry a collective meaning such as national honor or historical redemption, their body and will become material to be reshaped for the symbol's needs. Each demand is justified by the importance of the cause, so there is no natural limit on what can be taken from them. Finally the person is literally mutilated to fit the role, showing that the symbol has consumed the human being it was supposed to represent.