The palace was burned down and all the national treasuries were stolen and removed from the palace. Chinese had to go through 80 years of turbulence with continuous civil war, foreign interference and Japanese invasion. Nanjing Massacre ran deep into all Chinese memory. At the end of the World War II, America, without any consent from China, unitarily signed off Diaoyutai , a group of islands of China, to the war criminal, Japanese government. For almost two hundred years, this is the first government fully supported by majority of the Chinese that is able to fence off all the foreign powers from China although China was then a bankruptcy country after a long war and turbulence.
History tends to repeat itself.
Communist China after close door for so many years lags behind badly economically. China has eventually opened its door to foreign investors in late 70 and the cries for high trade deficit reappear again. The West and Japan led by US had tried to block Communist China to the corner since its early establishment. The history told us that it is not Chinese against the West. It is the West against China.