Imperial Britain is still not China of today. There are some cultures that will simply read your nonviolence as weakness and stomp over you.

Our modern tendency to compete on who can most hyperbolically denounce Western Imperialism strips us of any ability to calibrate between cultures. Do you know what Imperial Rome would have done to the nonviolent Indian revolt? They'd have executed it at its infancy and it would be a historical footnote. They wouldn't have even waited for it to become a big movement; the death penalty would have been used early and often. To some degree, even as entertainment.

My read on China is closer to first-century Rome than 20th century Britain. YMMV.