To say that the Chinese Communist revolution is a non-Western
             revolution is more than a clich‚. That revolution has been primarily
             directed, not like the French Revolution but against alien Western
             influences that approached the level of domination and drastically
             altered China's traditional relationship with the world. Hence the
             Chinese Communist attitude toward China's traditional past is
             selectively critical, but by no means totally hostile. The Chinese
             Communist revolution, and the foreign policy of the regime to which it
             has given rise, have several roots, each of which is embedded in the
             past more deeply than one would tend to expect of a movement seemingly
             The Chinese superiority complex institutionalized in their
             tributary system was justified by any standards less advanced or
             efficient than those of the modern West. China developed an elaborate
             and effective political system resting on a remarkable cultural
             unity, the latter in turn being due mainly to the general acceptance
             of a common, although difficult, written language and a common set of
             ethical and social values, known as Confucianism. Traditional china
             had neither the knowledge nor the power that would have been necessary
             to cope with the superior science, technology, economic organization,
             and military force that expanding West brought to bear on it. The
             general sense of national weakness and humiliation was rendered still
             keener by a unique phenomenon, the modernization of Japan and its rise
             to great power status. Japan's success threw China's failure into
             The Japanese performance contributed to the discrediting and
             collapse of China's imperial system, but it did little to make things
             easier for the subsequent successor. The Republic was never able to
             achieve territorial and national unity in the face of bad
             communications and the widespread diffusion of modern ar...