1. Communist China had made many mistakes when it closed its economy thru the narrow mindedness of the devil Mao, in a World in positive changes & sadly left millions of its citizens starved & dead on foolish policies. When the revered & only TRUE leader of China -Deng Xiao Ping, was released from captivity upon death of Mao, he opened up China in 1979 & saw millions of Chinese citizen lives uplifted from abject poverty.
Sadly, it did not continue as there were forces in power within China. China is NOT easy to govern, with 1.4Billion Humans still stuck on the corrupted Maoist 'red book' beliefs, & thus the Rule of Might was sadly necessary & even comprehensible... but it had even extended to foreign investments, whom were only bullied, had their productivity, extensive life savings/funds & tech advances stolen outright, even though they were the ones whom had provided jobs, knowledge & much more to China citizens....
2. China is a MAJOR EXPORTING nation, even as it lacked much necessary mineral & societal resources. It claimed to be a factory of the World, but such were thru sweatshops & stolen tech. One day, it may be able to match the Free World on producing even critical microchips & production machines, but then...who in the Free World would be foolish enough to buy & trust its often dubious products that look good, luxurious, but will crumble within short time, as China is well known for decades for cutting corners to make a few bucks from the naive?
3. Much of the Free World is self sufficient as they have resources, labor, Rule of law, etc, such as USA, Australia, EU if they can stay united, lush fertile valleys of S.E Asia thru ASEAN, etc. that they would need any products made from the so called 'factory of the World' that is claimed by China & its paid or moronic lobbyists.
China, for sure is no consumerist society unlike the Free World nations. There is no middle class. Only the relatively few rich are consumers, like India's elites & the poor are kept poor & neglected....
Should protectionism thru trade tariffs come into place, to protect each individual nation's or grouping's economy, jobs & progress - guess which country will suffer the most?
Reformation of trade & political policies will be needed within China. The Chinese too are only our fellow Humans & no one would want to see any fellow Human starved....We Humankind may not be able to change the past, but the future for oneself, loved ones & society is yet unwritten, to progress & evolve...