> I would note that Chinese history is marked by a
> perpetual oscillation between openness to the outside world
> and a closed-in xenophobia marked by attitudes of
> superiority.
This is an awfully sweeping generalization. How do you measure xenophobia in preindustrial societies, anyway? Trade links can also create violence where none existed, e.g. the slave trade which was integral to the European colonization of the outside world; earlier societies didn't have the mass communication or media to create true multicultural tolerance. Isn't this really superimposing ideologies of globalization on periods which were much more complex and contradictory than that?
-- Dennis