ABSTRACT
In China there was dominant a theory of compromise, expressed in the saying "Chinese learning as the base, foreign learning for use". Any assessment of China's view of the world requires an important distinction to be made between the historical, traditional, view and new, divergent views which have developed. The terms of the Treaty of Nanking provided for the opening of formal diplomatic relations with the Court of Peking; it also required the Chinese to set aside areas in the ports which would be assigned to the foreigners for residence and commerce, under the jurisdiction of their own Consuls. China, remained the real centre of the world, the only great united empire, the only people with a well recorded and ancient history, accurate and detailed, chronologically exact, playing in the Chinese culture the role fulfilled by epic and legend in other cultures. The Chinese desire to see Western Europe more united and pursuing an independent policy stems from the outlook.
