Chinese Professor Explains China's View of Globalization

Condensed from "Western, Chinese Conceptions of Globalization Are Very Different," copyright Zhang Xiaoying, head of the Department of English and Journalism at the School and English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, which was published in the Cambodia Daily, Oct. 27, 2010.

     As China extends its trade, investment and influence to every part of the world, the West has become increasingly agitated about what it sees as the new Chinese imperialism. Perhaps this isn't surprising, given the West's own history of expansion.
     It is an irony of globalization, which the West has thought of so long as its own invention, that now China is the great beneficiary. The US in particular finds it difficult to see this as anything other than a drive for world domination.
     Global ambition has been a formative part of the Western worldview for over 2,000 years, framing the fates of nations and governments. By contrast, China has traditionally styled itself as the "Middle Kingdom," the center of a world that could be left to its own devices so long as it did not intrude.
     Traditional Western and Chinese ways of thinking have an impact today. The West still tells the story of the whole world, but now it calls this story "globalization." And China is largely telling a story about itself, one in which it is merely the beneficiary of Western globalization.
     China's global economic activity, according to its traditional thought – captured in the saying "sweep the snow only in front of your doorstep" – draws on the rest of the world to look after the Chinese people. The contrast with the West's drive to shape the world in its own image could not be more profound. The scope for mutual incomprehension is vast.