Introduction

Abstract

The people living in the country with the greatest population in the world — who have, for more than two thousand years, called themselves “Han” in their own language (that is, descendants of the Han empire, — have lived for more than two thousand years in the belief that their country is the center of the civilized world, and that their civilization is superior to that of the “barbarian” peoples living in other parts of the world. The name of China in Chinese is Zhongguo, that is, “middle country” which, in the final analysis, also reflects this “China-centered” image of the world. Since for thousands of years the Hans generally had contact only with the agrarian or nomadic peoples living in their immediate surroundings and with those in the archipelago of the South China sea, this belief in their superiority gradually became a conviction, supported by the fact that the peoples capable of forming a state beyond their frontiers — the Koreans and Japanese to the northeast, the Vietnamese to the south — had long acknowledged the superiority of the Chinese civilization, had adopted their writing system and customs as well as the basic system of ideas of their social order, i.e., Confucianism.