Funny you say that because exactly the opposite thing happened to China. They were completely taken advantage of in the 19th century and didn't fully recover fr

Funny you say that because exactly the opposite thing happened to China. They were completely taken advantage of in the 19th century and didn't fully recover from that until a 100 years later when Nixon and Kissinger in one of their "4D chess" moves restarted diplomatic relations as a way to limit the Soviets. From that point on they had a pretty clever long view policy but it would have been surprising if they hadn't. They spent the previous century getting fucked by foreign invaders, if they hadn't learned how to resist it by the 1970's then Chinese culture as we know it would have been doomed to collapse by the 90's. And truth be told they almost did in 1989. If the CCP was a little less organized, if the military was a little less loyal and if the protesters had their shit together a bit more it could have turned into a full popular revolution.