I am sure that the Japanese, the Chinese and the peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France, in spite of the fact that we are related by blood (...)
When in August 1793 a British delegation showed their hosts a terrestrial globe, it turned into a diplomatic incident, for the Chinese were furious to see that their empire covered so little of it. For centuries the Chinese had thought of themselves as 'The Middle Kingdom', that is the centre of the civilized world. To see otherwise was a shock.