On May 27, 2021, CCG hosted a dialogue between CCG President Huiyao Wang and Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University. Hansen is a renowned historian known for her work on China to 1600 and the Silk Road in particular. Her book The Silk Road: A New History (2012) tells the story of how this modest commercial artery became the world’s most famous cultural superhighway and is one of the most popular books on the topic. In The Year 1000 (2020), Hansen explores the early beginnings of globalization as people around the world became connected through maritime trade and cultural exchange.

Hansen brought a valuable historical perspective to contemporary issues related to globalization, highlighting lessons from the Song Dynasty, the Silk Road, and other examples from over 1000 years ago. Our conversation began with Song Dynasty China, which Hansen describes as the most globalized place on Earth at the time. It goes on to cover topics such as trade and taxation, Confucianism and cultural diffusion, overland trade via the Silk Road, and the key drivers of globalization from the year 1000 up to the present day.

Huiyao Wang: In this dialogue series, we’ve been talking to many international opinion leaders, well-known scholars, and policymakers about the subject of globalization. You not only study the history of globalization but also are very familiar with China. For example, you have described the port city of Quanzhou, Fujian in the Song Dynasty, which attracted merchants and different kinds of people from different parts of the world. I once visited a museum in Quanzhou where you can see evidence of people visiting from the Middle East, India, and other parts of the world. It’s really fascinating to look at that part of history.

What led to this study of globalization? Maybe you can tell us about your background and how you came to these findings about people like the Vikings and traders in Quanzhou, and how they were already moving around the world 1000 years ago.

Valerie Hansen: I came to globalization from the Silk Road. My Silk Road book focused on what is now China and Central Asia. Often, histories of the Silk Road end around the year 1000, as that’s when the cave in Dunhuang closes.

There’s a theory from a Professor at Peking University named Rong Xinjiang who has proposed that the people living in Dunhuang heard about the fall of Khotan to the armies of the Karakhanids and that their response to that invasion was to close the Document Cave. Not everybody agrees with that theory, but it’s a known fact that the Karakhanids did take Khotan before 1006. Another key event around the year 1000 is the Treaty of Chanyuan between the Liao and the Song.

When I was finishing the Silk Road book, I knew about those two events and I knew that the Vikings had touched down in Canada probably around exactly the year 1000, and I wondered if there was any connection among those three events. After five years of looking around, I concluded that a lot of the world was undergoing the same process in the year 1000; regions were getting bigger, people were encountering people from other places and from other regions, and that had a profound effect on people. There are earlier examples of contact between people from different countries. Extensive contact along the Silk Road is one example, and the Roman Empire had trade contacts with India. But in the year 1000, much more of the world was affected by these new contacts, and that’s how I ended up with this topic.

Huiyao Wang: In The Silk Road: A New History, you describe remarkable findings that have revolutionized our understanding of the trade routes of the Silk Road. In your Silk Road book, you explore eight sites on the road from Xi’an to Samarkand and the Middle East, where envoys, pilgrims, and travelers mix in cosmopolitan communities, and explain how this commercial artery becomes a “cultural superhighway.” So, even if we say that globalization starts around the year 1000, maybe the spirit of globalization dates back to the start of the Silk Road. Would you say that the Silk Road also had an impact on globalization?

Valerie Hansen: What’s going on in China and Central Asia with the Silk Road has parallels in other parts of the world, like Europe. We know less about Africa and America because we lack written sources from those places.

Regarding the impact, I would say in the period before the year 1000, not that many people were affected. [But of course,] historical processes don’t really have a beginning. There’s always some earlier trace or evidence of the phenomenon you are researching.

With the Silk Road, there’s a shipwreck called Belitung shipwreck, an African or Indonesian boat that was found in the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia in a place called Belitung. It was carrying Chinese ceramics. The date of the ship is 826–827 and we know that because there’s a pot with the date written in Chinese on it. The ship was carrying 60,000 ceramics—that’s mass production already in the year 826, and that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about in my book, a very early example.

A hundred years later, there’s another shipwreck and it’s carrying 600,000 Chinese pots on a single ship. So, yes, there’s some evidence of [trade contact] earlier [than the year 1000]. But I bring up those two examples because they show how shipping and ocean travel was on a completely different scale than overland trade. The Silk Road in the period before the year 1000 was mostly about overland trade and there was a constraint on overland trade in that animals can carry only so much—there were no machines and no mechanization. I think everyone’s mental image of the Silk Road is of camels. In fact, most of the trade, and we know this from Chinese documents, was on horseback or on donkeys or in carts. [Goods are only carried] on camels when you’re going through the desert on sand and if people have a choice, they avoid sand and go on roads.

I think there’s a real change in the year 1000 because we see this shift to sea travel. People travel on the sea a little bit before 1000, but in the year 1000—in different places with the Vikings, the Polynesians, and the Chinese—we see the beginnings of genuinely long-distance sea travel.

Huiyao Wang: That’s a very interesting comparison. What do you think of the different phases of globalization? Trade is one element, but there is also religious and cultural exchange. For example, Xuanzang went to India.Footnote 1 In the Tang Dynasty, Japanese students came to China. So, what do you think about the different phases of globalization?

Valerie Hansen: It’s funny, I was actually going to ask you the same question about the phases of globalization. Let me start now and go back in time. The consensus among historians is that the current phase of globalization started around the 1970s–1980s. A key thing that observers look at is “space–time compression.” If you can get on an airplane and travel from New York to Beijing in a day, space and time have been compressed. A journey which by boat could take months is suddenly reduced to one day. This [space–time compression] is a hallmark of the phase of globalization we’re living in now. Airplanes, computers, even the fact that you and I can have this conversation and see each other in real-time—these are new things that did not exist in the past. I’d say that’s the current phase which starts around the 1970s, do you agree?

Huiyao Wang: Yes, I think that you’re right. As we discussed, I think there are some early sparks of globalization during the Silk Road. By the year 1000, people really start to move around the world and globalization picks up momentum.

Later, we have Columbus reaching the Americas and Zheng He, the Chinese mariner, who led seven expeditions to Southeast Asia or even as far as Africa. Things started to move around—products, seeds, or even disease. But I would say that globalization has really accelerated since the Industrial Revolution. Technology has sped up globalization to the point where today we are connected in real-time. But looking back at history, I think it’s fascinating to try to trace the origins of these trends.

So, let’s go back to history. Over 1000 years ago, when Quanzhou welcomed so many foreign merchants and travelers, Confucianism was already prevalent in China. What do you think of Confucianism and its impact on the Song dynasty? Also, from a historical perspective, how did globalization impact China? You write in your book that at the time, China already had a population of around 100 million people, when the global population was probably only around 250 million, meaning that China accounted for 35–40 percent of the global population. Maybe you can describe the Song Dynasty and the historical impact of globalization, which were covered in your book.

Valerie Hansen: In the book, I say that Song Dynasty China was the most globalized place on Earth at the time. The reason I say that is that so many people in China lived on the coast, as is still true today, and people on the coast of China are much more affected by these international trends than people in the interior. Quanzhou is a very good example of a coastal city that was affected by globalization. As you said, you can see in the museum the evidence of foreign residents. There were many tombstones of people in Arabic. There were also a lot of Indians in Quanzhou, and you can see their presence in stones from preserved pieces of Hindu temples, which are no longer standing today.

The reason China was so important was that it was already a manufacturing center. There were huge workshops and kilns making ceramics. I mentioned the ceramics from the shipwrecks because they are the thing that survive, archaeologically. But we know that the Song Dynasty also exported metals, not only metal objects like pots, knives, and weapons, but also bars of iron, lead, and tin.

China had massive exports carried on Chinese ships and used the compass so ships could navigate. What people less often think about are Chinese imports and how many things they were bringing in. As I talked about in the book, in Quanzhou, lots of people wanted xiang, which is a broad term covering fragrant woods like sandalwood, and aloeswood. In the Song, people were bringing in these fragrant woods, they were bringing in foods, spices, and other natural products from Southeast Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. There was a huge demand in China for these foreign goods and that’s what was fueling the trade.

You asked me about the Confucians. The Confucians didn’t say that much about this trade. There’s an American historian named Charles Hartman who has just brought out a new book about the history of the Song. One of his arguments is that there were two groups within the Chinese government. There’s a famous group we know about because they became Confucian thinkers. There was also a less famous group of technocrats, a lot of whom were linked to the likes of Wang Anshi.Footnote 2

These technocrats were looking at governance and figuring out the best way to tax trade, which is one of the interesting innovations of the Song period. Everyone knows about the tribute system which existed in the Tang, and it existed in the Song, but it somewhat falls to the side as the government was spending much more of its energy on taxing ships that arrived in Chinese ports. They collected three kinds of taxes and there were only certain ports that had the bureaucracy to do this kind of taxation.

I talked about Quanzhou and how they handled this before they were recognized as a city that could do this kind of taxation. In certain ports, the ship pulled into the port, the government officials got on the boat, and then they just took a fixed percentage of the ships’ cargo, which changes during the Song Dynasty. Then the officials looked at what was left, and said: “Oh, these are the goods we have a government monopoly on.” There were very sophisticated ideas about which goods should be sold by a monopoly and they confiscated a share of those. Then there was another category of goods called “coarse goods,” which officials cared less about, so they were taxed but the ship could sell them in the port. When you look at Song Dynasty documents, you can see that officials were trying to decide how much they could tax; too much, and the merchants won’t come again. If they taxed too little, then the government doesn’t have the revenues it needs. It was very sophisticated, and I don’t know of anything like that happening in other parts of the world in the year 1000.

Huiyao Wang: It’s fascinating to hear you talk about the vivid life of the Song Dynasty and how it was the most globalized place in the world at that time. Actually, my father was from Hangzhou, and I see how the region has been revived in today’s China, drawing on strong traditions from that period. And Quanzhou, as you’ve mentioned, had already become one of the biggest ports in China, and probably in the world, too.

So, are there any lessons we can learn from the Song Dynasty and how they were able to become so globalized, with an advanced tax system that was well balanced so as to not drive merchants away, but rather motivate them to do more foreign trade?

Also, the Song Dynasty signed the Chanyuan Treaty with the Liao, which managed to secure a long period of peace and security. Graham Allison also mentioned this treaty in my talk with him as an exception that might show a way to avoid the Thucydides Trap.

So, what lessons can we learn from the Song Dynasty for our current times? We mentioned ports and China now has seven out of the world’s ten largest ports. In some ways, it is like China is trying to revive the glory days of the Song regarding trade and globalization. But China also faces a lot of challenges, as does globalization itself. Comparing globalization now and then, what are the similarities and what are the new challenges?

Valerie Hansen: These are interesting questions. My book cites the year 1000 as a beginning of globalization, but I’m not claiming globalization was fully developed at that time. There were probably just a handful of geographers writing in Arabic who had a mental vision of the whole globe and knew which parts of the globe had people on them. They didn’t know about the Americas, but they knew how big the globe was and they knew how many of those places people were living in. I think a big difference between globalization in the year 1000 up to 1500 and today, is that in the period I’m writing about, there were natural limits on globalization. I mentioned the shipwreck from the year 930 that had 600,000 ceramics on it. The reason we know about that ship is that it sank in the Java Sea. So, historically it was possible for an exporting country to export a certain amount of goods, but never enough to overwhelm local production.

Archaeologists have found Chinese ceramics all along the coast of Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and East Africa. You talked about Zheng He’s route. The Chinese were active, and much earlier than Zheng He, on this route all the way from Guangzhou and Quanzhou to Mombasa in East Africa. We know Chinese goods were being sold all along that route, but we also know that local manufacturers were continuing to produce because archaeologically we can see copies of Chinese vessels. There’s a picture in my book of a Chinese vessel that was found in a city in Iran called Shush, or historically Susa. And we also have a local copy, which was actually inferior. The Chinese vessel is quite beautiful and has a clean, white glaze. The local vessel has a kind of a bad glaze with cracks in it. So, we know that local manufacturing continued. I think that is one of the big changes from today. Because of [transport technology like] large cargo airplanes, one country can produce so much that it can take over the whole market of another country. I think that’s one of the things that we have to think about going forward with globalization. And I think that the pandemic has shown us that being entirely dependent on another country for any product is probably not a good long-term strategy.

Huiyao Wang: I agree. Another lesson we can take is that the Song Dynasty flourished in part because they secured a relatively long period of peace through the Chanyuan Treaty. So, for globalization to deepen and generate prosperity, peace is important. Another lesson is that trade can bond and link people together, as business interests serve as a common denominator to unite people. Reading your book, we find there are so many interesting lessons from history.

As a historian, what do you think about the impact of Confucianism? Confucianism has had a great influence on the region through a kind of “cultural globalization.” In the Tang Dynasty, Japanese students came to Chang’an. Confucianism also had an impact on neighboring countries like Vietnam. What do you think about regionalization in Asia, in which Confucianism can play some role? I think that Confucius still has a big influence in Greater China and other parts of Asia.

Valerie Hansen: I think one of the things that’s very interesting about the year 1000 is you can see certain regions taking shape. Actually, you can see that earlier in the case of East Asia. I would say that was a very good example of China’s soft power.

People in what’s now modern Korea, modern Japan, and modern Vietnam all adopted the Chinese writing system, and there was a [regional] book market. Books were destroyed when Kaifeng fell to the Jurchens. The Imperial Library was damaged and a lot of books were lost, but they can be recovered because there are copies available on the Korean Peninsula and in Japan. So, there are very clear links among East Asian countries using Chinese characters. It means that texts can move and don’t have to be translated. In a period when translation was so slow and expensive, to be able to leave texts in their original language was very valuable.

One of the interesting things about regions is that they can change. So, we can look and say, there’s the region of “East Asia”—China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and they have similarities. But if you go back to the year 1000, one of the things that’s interesting about the Song was that it was a very economically prosperous dynasty, but geographically a small dynasty. The Song ceded the 16 prefectures to the Liao and when the Jin Dynasty invaded, all of northern China came under foreign rule. So, you could draw the regions in East Asia a little bit differently, which I try to do in the book.

The region of territory under the Liao and the Jin had much more contact with Japan and Korea than the Song territory. There was an idea that the world was going to come to an end in 1052.Footnote 3 That idea did not circulate in Song, but it did circulate among the Liao, in Japan, and in Korea. So, I think one of the things that we can see is that a country may belong to more than one region. When we draw a region, we tend to think that some countries belong to this region and other countries belong to that region. But when we look at how people in the past lived, at one moment they may see themselves as part of one region, in another moment, they may see themselves as part of another region.

Huiyao Wang: It’s very interesting to hear that in the year 1000, East Asia was taking some kind of shape. Chinese characters were being used in Japan, Korea, and even Vietnam. It seems Chinese characters and probably Confucianism play some role in the forming of this region, and we still see the influence of this today. For example, East Asian culture emphasizes respect for seniority, education, and hard work.

In the course of its history, China has generally been relatively peaceful and neutral. For example, even during Zheng He’s seven expeditions, they never conquered or colonized any place. That’s interesting to see.

Valerie Hansen: If you allow me, I will disagree with you about Zheng He. Most of the time it was peaceful, but there were times when the Chinese intervened in succession disputes in countries. Nowadays in China, Zheng He is often described as a very peaceful explorer. But when you look at sources from the time, while it was usually peaceful trade, it was a huge shock to many places to have so many people arrive on those ships. Zheng He’s fleet, which at its fullest had 28,000 people, was arriving in places that may not have had enough food for that many people. We also have historic evidence of cases, for example, when a King who was loyal and had sent tribute mission to China would die, a son takes over, and the Chinese don’t approve of that son and then they intervene. So, I would say “mostly” peaceful for Zheng He.

Huiyao Wang: But at least they didn’t really conquer any place and stay there forever. That was even 100 years before Columbus. So, at least it was largely peaceful.

Maybe now we can talk a bit about contemporary globalization. We have already had a thousand years of globalization. As a historian, how do you see the future of globalization and what are the challenges and opportunities? What are some issues we should look at, such as technology, people, migration, trade, or the digital economy?

Valerie Hansen: Well, I’m convinced that globalization began in the year 1000 on a worldwide basis and that it’s here to stay. I think it’s part of the human condition. The motivation for globalization is that people want new things. Sometimes it’s new ideas, but often it’s particular commodities.

In my book, I write about how when the Vikings arrived in what is now Canada, they met the local people, the indigenous peoples of Canada. The two groups looked at each other. This phenomenon happened in lots of different places. They look at each other and think, what do those people have that we don’t have? They looked at the Vikings and said, you have this red cloth. We don’t have that red cloth, which is something we want. The Vikings looked at them, and they said, oh, you have these fabulous furs from animals that we’ve never seen; we want those. Then, they begin to trade, which makes me think that human impulse underlies globalization—a thousand years ago and today too. The same thing as how people go into a store and see something they’ve never seen before and think “I have to have that.” That’s also true in Quanzhou in the year 1000—“the fragrant wood from Southeast Asia is so wonderful, I’m going to build a whole room out of this wood, it’s that important to me.” That’s something we can see.

The motivation for globalization starts very early, and it’s on an individual basis, which is that people desire these new things. But we can also see very early on that some people were affected adversely by this trade. When I was researching the book, I was very interested in anti-globalization riots, such as those that took place in Cairo in 996 and in Constantinople in the early 1180s. These were reactions against foreign merchants, where you have local people saying, “oh, these people are just so much richer than our local merchants. They live in nicer houses, they’ve taken our women as their wives.” So, from the very beginning of globalization, we can see some people benefiting from globalization, but we can also see people who are actively harmed by it, who object to it, and want to control it.

Thinking about the future of globalization, I think the question is how we can control these forces. In the modern world, maybe we should take advantage of globalization, but make sure that people who have lost their jobs because of globalization have some protection. I think the issue for us going forward is figuring out ways for governments to cooperate to lessen the negative impact of globalization. You and Tom Friedman talked about how the United Nations is maybe not strong enough to do this. I don’t know, because I’m a historian and not good at looking into the future, you’re better at that than I am. Do you see any avenues forward for greater cooperation among different governments or different places?

Huiyao Wang: I think you’ve given an excellent analysis. I also believe that early globalization was motivated by trade and exchanging products. But as you said, while globalization has generated a lot of wealth, there are also widening gaps within and between societies. Today, we see the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and wider, even during the pandemic. When I talked to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, he emphasized how globalization is global, but democracy is local. Local citizens have only limited control over the global movement of goods, talent, and capital. Tom Friedman is right, we need global governance, but we do not have a true “global government” yet, so I think we have to strengthen multilateralism, rather than reverting to unilateralism and fighting against each other.

Reviewing the history of globalization, when globalization was just starting, it was manageable and its impact was limited. But once it gets into full swing, globalization affects everyone’s lives, so governments need to consider how to forge a more inclusive and equal form of globalization.

We need to strengthen the UN and the multilateral system. We may also have to invent some new multilateral governance institutions. For example, figuring out how to tax the activities of multinational corporations in a way that is fair for both the home and host country. Also, finding ways to dismantle barriers and to restrain nationalism. The Internet transcends borders, but if there is too much nationalism and populism, that could work against globalization. I think our discussion today is significant because in looking back to the origins and successes of globalization, we can draw lessons for how to address the current challenges facing globalization.

Moving on to your book The Silk Road: A New History, which has become famous. According to your account, the development of the Silk Road was influenced by economic conditions. There was a lack of infrastructure and it was difficult to travel long distances across land, which limited the development of globalization.

Nowadays, we have lots more infrastructure. China has developed infrastructure quickly over the last four decades and started the Belt and Road Initiative. Since World War II, we have had a trade boom and economic booms. Could we next have an “infrastructure revolution,” a modern infrastructure-supported Silk Road? The Belt and Road takes inspiration from the historical Silk Road and other routes like the Spice trade routes. These could be combined to support a more multilateral global trend for the future.

Valerie Hansen: I share the positive spirit, but as a Silk Road historian, it’s important to remember that when we talk about the period of the Silk Road, the Chinese also had a military presence in Central Asia. The reason there was so much silk moving is that the Tang Dynasty had a chronic shortage of coins. The Tang had three kinds of currencies: grain in fixed measures, coins (which there were not enough of), and silks. Silk doesn’t seem like a very good currency today, but it was pretty good at that time because it held its value and in some cases was lighter than the coins. That’s important because with the Silk Road the constraint was the difficulty of carrying things over land. You’re right that modern infrastructure makes things different. There was nothing comparable to current high-speed trains and highways in those days.

When we think about the Silk Road, there are periods when the Chinese had a strong military presence in Central Asia. After 755, after the An Lushan Rebellion, there are periods where the Chinese were much less present in Central Asia. Those periods may be the ones that tell us the most about the possibilities for multilateralism, when we can see political units of roughly the same size cooperating. For example, the rulers of Dunhuang and the rulers of Khotan had a lot of exchange. Neither of them was a giant state in the way that the Tang dynasty was.

There aren’t that many examples from the past of giant states successfully cooperating with smaller states. When we talk about the Treaty of Chanyuan, that’s important because the Chinese made some concessions to the Liao and the peace lasts for 100 years. But while the Song were not fighting with the Liao, they were fighting with the Tanguts (Western Xia). There was constant war, so the Song did not achieve their goal of perfect peace. Therefore, I would say that things are complicated. Things are complex now, and things were complex in the past.

Huiyao Wang: You describe how marine globalization starts to get going around the year 1000. Now, we are in an era where overland or continental globalization is possible because of infrastructure. For example, last year, intercontinental trade between China and Europe increased 50 percent, with a cohort of trains moving back and forth.

I want to ask another question about globalization during the Song dynasty, when China was possibly the most globalized place in the world. As we are talking about 1000 years of globalization, and the Song is a prime reflection of this process, maybe you can talk a bit more about globalization during the Song dynasty.

Valerie Hansen: To me, one of the hallmarks of globalization is that people produce something and can’t even see where their goods go. I think that’s why people have this feeling today of things being out of control; they make something and they don’t know where it’s going or who is buying it.

In the Song, we see massive production of ceramics, as well as mining and textiles. These products leave China and travel to Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa. People in China don’t know that much about where those things are going. The same thing is true of the people they are trading with, those trading natural products coming from Southeast Asia. We have descriptions of forest-dwelling peoples who lived basically by hunting and gathering suddenly having to produce (hunt and gather) for a foreign market, for example, Kingfisher birds with blue feathers, an import highly valued by the Chinese. Imagine somebody living in a forest in Indonesia, collecting and hunting these birds, and then bringing them to some broker.

In the modern world, because of the freer movement of information, we can learn more about distant markets. But distant markets still have a large impact; one year you might sell a huge amount of a good, but the next year the market collapses, and people lose their jobs and you don’t know why. I think that it is worth thinking about—how we can harness information to mitigate this damage of globalization in the future.

Huiyao Wang: I think that one of the characteristics of the Song and Tang is that China was quite open. Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam came to China. These foreign religions and cultures contributed to the opening-up and development of China. This historical experience suggests that China should continue to be open and inclusive, welcome different cultures, and promote mutual learning between different places. The Song and Tang dynasties were able to coexist peacefully with the other parts of the world. Confucianism also established a strong foothold during the Song Dynasty. All of these elements probably played some role in promoting globalization during the Song Dynasty.

Valerie Hansen: I think that’s true. I find the free exchange of information, especially in this early period, quite inspiring. There’s a person I talk about in the book named al-Biruni. He’s an advisor to a ruler, based in Afghanistan but also spent time in India. Some envoys came from the Liao to visit his ruler. He has a chance to talk to them and to learn about North China. He learns a lot about South China too. He writes about China in Arabic and he writes about the encounter between his ruler and the envoy from the Liao dynasty. Unfortunately, the Liao sent an envoy in 1026 or 1027, and they want to initiate diplomatic relations, but the ruler says no. I think we should not take any lessons from that because it's an example of closed-mindedness. But his advisor al-Biruni talks to the envoys from the Liao dynasty and uses the chance to learn more about China. I think it is important to learn from other countries and from people in those other countries about how those societies function.

Huiyao Wang: We’ve reviewed the history of globalization and you have proposed that in a way, globalization started in the year 1000, which is almost 500 years before Columbus went to America. You also talked about how the Song dynasty was one of the most globalized places in the world in the year 1000.

I think it’s important to learn from history and draw on the spirit of globalization as we face new challenges in the current day, like deglobalization, populism, and nationalism. Revisiting history can help us to find new solutions, such as how to address inequality and promote openness. It has been a great discussion and I really appreciate you giving your time. Maybe you could say a few words to conclude as a final remark.

Valerie Hansen: As you were talking, I was thinking about how in the beginning of globalization, the forces of globalization were much weaker than they are now. But we can already see that they adversely affected some people, so much that they kill some foreign merchants who are living in Cairo and in Constantinople. There’s also the Huang Chao rebellion when there’s a massacre of Arab merchants who are living in Guangzhou. The death toll is debated. But many people died in these riots.

In my view, the forces of globalization were weaker around the year 1000 and the checks on globalization were stronger than they are now—like the risks involved in shipping and the high number of shipwrecks, the costs of overland trade which meant that there just wasn’t that much trade going over land, because it cost so much, camel caravans could get lost, and people could die if they were robbed.

I think as we go forward, we have to think about what kinds of checks we may need to institute to try to balance the impact of globalization. The pandemic, in a way, is a check on the process of globalization. We’ve had over a year to think very hard about this world we live in and how we’re going to go forward in the future. And I think you’re going to have to find a futurologist, not a historian, to tell you about that.

Huiyao Wang: I think that globalization is very resilient, full of vitality and its own momentum. There will be setbacks and zigzags, but the trend will continue.

As you said, initially, globalization did not touch that many people, but today we have 200 million Chinese people learning English and 150 million Chinese people going abroad for tourism each year. Globalization is here to stay and we have to learn to live with each other peacefully. That’s a lesson we must learn from the history of globalization. So once again, thank you very much and I hope when you come to China, we will see you again and invite you to visit CCG. Thank you very much, Professor Hansen, it was nice talking to you.

Valerie Hansen: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to have such a dialogue. It was really a pleasure.