Mandarin Vocabulary Blog

depends on whether we are looking at these in modern chinese context or classical chinese. 霸道 implies legalism and militarism, as opposed from confucianism 王道. it was quite neutral in the beginning, but after confucianism gained official support and moral high grounds it slowly degraded into a negative word.

looking from another way, since 霸气 could mean having a majestic/intimidiating aura whereas 霸道 implies physically pressurizing others. 霸气 could be explained as 'paper tiger' or even 'armchair general', while 霸道 would be 'getting the job done', well, in an unfriendly manner (which i finds it rather true, since the original essay was from a chinese military site, explains quite a lot about chinese military ideology ).