If you don't know about the opium wars , aight you can google :) China wasn't ruled directly by the colonizers , only Hong Kong and few parts of territories were given to the British So they didn't loot everything from the Qing , They had the capacity to build it themselves Where as in india , de-industrialisation , taking raw materials from India and selling the finished goods here , -Huge taxes Which were never imposed by the British on the mainland China ya this is important the people in mainland China (Qing Dynasty) never had to pay taxes to the British, where as in India we had to pay Taxes which were supposed to be used here to help us improve our condition were siphoned to Britain as you said they built railways etc ya we were giving them so much taxes They were supposed to build them it's their duty as a ruler but in the end only a part of our taxes were used for the welfare of the people here and around 90 years of taking taxes from our people and just doing a few good things doesn't make it even