Well, if there was truly a quid-pro-quo, then the United Kingdom should pay China reparations for its atrocious actions during the opium wars, similar to what G

Well, if there was truly a quid-pro-quo, then the United Kingdom should pay China reparations for its atrocious actions during the opium wars, similar to what Germany had to do to survivors of the holocaust. If there were truly a quid-pro-quo, the West would be clamoring for statehood for Puerto Rico like they do for Taiwan. If there were truly a quid-pro-quo, calls for the 'entire western world' to band against China would make as much sense as calls for 'the entire western world' to band against the United States, who did quite a bit to rig the global economy in its favor after WW2 and Bretton-Woods. If China treated the Western world the way the Western world treated China, there would be hell to pay. And yet people like you just can't stand that they would act in their own self interest, and become a superpower without asking the permission of the West. Countries will take whatever advantages are available to them to develop and benefit their people. China never tried to hide what they were doing. All of the world's economists were aware of their economic protectionist policies for the past 50 or so years. Let's call a spade a spade. This 'outrage' about China's policies in the year 2020 is nothing more than a frustration with the West's ruling classes for failing to respond to China's rise at all in the last 50 years. And there is clearly a sense of entitlement as well, as though those of use living in the West deserve to live in the hegemonic country despite not working as hard or valuing progress as much as those in other societies. The Western world never cared about Chinese people or what was happening in China until it started to threaten their own global dominance. Now all of a sudden you have elite clamoring for civil rights and justice in China, while those same elites profited for decades off of cheap Chinese labor after the Great Leap Forward and Tiananmen Square. Sure, you should advocate for your country to change its policies if its getting a bad deal from China. But turning this all into a "West v. China" thing is how we got here in the first place.