A childhood belief about nationalities

I am Chinese but I moved to a foreign 3rd world country(even more 3rd world than china) with very limited information resources at early age, I went to school with a japanese and a korean. And the only information I got was from reading dictionaries and the pictures on it and I read about 2nd world war and japanese carriers and since I grew up in the 80s jap products have become very popular there and i thought they were ruling the world and since they attacked china i thought they were better, but later i read on magazine that china had largest army in the world and I couldn't believe it since I only kno china thru chinese kung fu movies which showed very backward people, and this jap used to tease me and look down on me, But I now know better that china has developped nuclear weapons and space programs to kill all japs if we wanted...what a relieve japs are not ruling the world whew