In June 1900, troops of the Western powers broke the Boxer siege of the embassies in Peking, looted the Empress Dowager's summer palace, and thus, destroyed for a time the valiant nationalist effort to halt colonial exploitation of China. And now, here we are at the other end of the century, listening to leading lights of progressive American politics, from Nader's fair-trade campaign, from the AFL-CIO and assorted NGOs, plus, leading lights of right-wing American politics, all calling for China to be denied admission to the WTO. What happened in between? Oh, it's an old story now. China had a revolution, a series of revolutions, in fact. Other poor countries did, too. They tried to redistribute land and wealth, build an industrial base, foster internal demand, get a fair price for the commodities they needed to sell abroad. The Western powers didn't care for that any more than they liked the Boxers. They mustered armies to crush these revolutions, hired mercenaries, saboteurs and spies. They never relented, never forgave.
Some revolutions struggled on for several decades, in varying states of siege, boycotts, embargoes, economic sabotage. One survives.