In our contemporary world the notion of global interconnectedness has become commonplace, to a large extent because of the possibility of very rapid international travel and, in particular, because of the development of communications systems that make it possible to conduct transactions almost simultaneously around the world. But global connections are nothing new, even though the times and our conceptions of time have changed.
The evidence of history simply negates the long-standing myth, propagated since the eighteenth century primarily by Westerners frustrated by their inability to impose their will on China, of Chinese isolation and isolationism. Well before the advent of Europeans to East Asia, China was integrated into a wide-ranging network of commercial, intellectual, religious, and cultural contacts that linked it with the whole of Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, at least the northern part of Africa, and periodically even lands farther afield. From earliest times China sought out and took in a vast range of foreign imports, in the form of both material goods and new knowledge, and spread abroad its own material and spiritual civilization, most notably textiles, ceramics, and Confucian ideas of government, social organization, and human behavior. With those exports went many other traits of the cultural heritage, including Buddhism, transformed by its Chinese sojourn from its original Indian condition.
This age-old experience of international exchange brought China to a keen awareness of the perils of unrestrained interaction with others who might not share its values and traditions. In that view, when such encounters took the form of trade, they risked increasing commercial greed and exacerbating social inequalities. When they involved religion, they risked wooing Chinese converts away from strict allegiance to China and its political leadership. When they involved culture, more broadly conceived, there was no limit to what might be at stake. Recognizing that both foreign trade and foreign religions came unavoidably bundled with foreign cultures, many Chinese tended to the view that the potential consequences of allowing free circulation of any part of the bundle posed a potential threat to their political autonomy and distinctive cultural identity. In consequence they were, collectively, extremely cautious. To outsiders, that caution may have appeared more like exclusivism, but the record demonstrates that it in no way implied an inherent hostility to foreigners as such or to their material, intellectual, or spiritual civilizations.
The extraordinarily tenacious notion, that traditional China was almost hopelessly attached to its traditions, makes it particularly important in China’s case to bear in mind the shared burden of responsibility for history. A careful examination of the facts suggests that time after time instances in which China did prove resistant to new ideas, new knowledge, and new ways of doing things cannot be wholly explained as the simple consequence of an ingrained hostility to innovation. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chinese mathematicians and astronomers, for example, were skeptical about what Jesuit missionaries revealed to them concerning the latest discoveries in Europe not because of a reluctance to accept new ideas but because ecclesiastical restrictions on the missionaries had led them into such inconsistencies that it was plain to Chinese evaluating the new information that it was riddled with errors or at least contradiction. Chinese scholars were not scientific reactionaries, but they could hardly help concluding that the Jesuits were best not relied on. In the imperialist nineteenth century, Chinese resistance to Western demands for “free trade” led many Westerners to characterize China as profoundly conservative, but it would be more accurate to speak of China’s insistence on independence in the face of Western aggression; what the West called free did not seem so to China. Much more recently Westerners who blame Chinese rhetoric about the evils of American imperialism for the lion’s share of the mutual hostility between the People’s Republic and the United States during the Cold War era fail to acknowledge the role of the American anti-Communist movement, which for years led the United States to treat the People’s Republic as a virtual pariah.
The preceding chapters have, in addition, presented many illustrations of Chinese open-mindedness and its cousin, a pragmatic adaptability and willingness to experiment. More often than not China managed to reap advantage from new situations and new possibilities. One example emerged out of the gulf between propaganda and reality in foreign relations. In the ideal Chinese worldview, others acknowledged China’s superiority and revolved in its orbit, but in the real world China recognized that this was not what happened. In practice China often had to acknowledge that at best it was no more than equal to other states and that at worst its weakness made it impossible to insist on equality, let alone superiority. In another example, dating from the late eighteenth century, the Qing emperor claimed in public China’s complete indifference to foreign goods and manufactures but almost simultaneously sought to acquire European-style artillery, thus belying Western claims of Chinese indifference to technological innovation. An illustration of China’s pragmatic ability to make the best of a bad situation was its adroit use of the nineteenth-century treaty system as both a shield and a sword. Compelled by the early “unequal treaties” to permit foreign residence in specified treaty ports, China vigorously resisted the establishment of additional foreign settlements beyond the designated areas. It also adopted the system of international treaties as a means of establishing Chinese diplomatic representation overseas. Finally, the degree to which Chinese intellectuals were willing to experiment with different political forms, all imported, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests an unusual degree of open-mindedness. The consistent purpose was salvation of the nation; in pursuit of that goal, Chinese proved ready to try whatever might be necessary, however new and however foreign its origin.
The configurations of global power have undergone countless shifts over the past few centuries. What has not changed much has been the way in which events in China have influenced and been influenced by those taking place elsewhere in the world; restraint and reserve are not the same as isolation. The global currents that have whirled and eddied throughout Chinese history flow on toward the next millennium.