ABSTRACT
Like the Roman Empire, the Zhou dynasty was made up of an east and west—Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou—and both had a highly developed and steeply hierarchical political and social system based on the ancestral beliefs of Confucianism. If Byzantium was a great connector of peoples and cultures by virtue of plan and position, the Chinese states-system was the opposite, with long periods of warfare and consolidation while remaining relatively isolated from the diffusion going on in other parts of the world. The fact the Chinese were able to absorb other cultures while still insisting on its own superiority suggests they were not trying to encourage cultural exchange as much as they were willing to incorporate other groups—as long as those groups understood and accepted and performed their role in the system. The Chinese were willing to assimilate even people they considered to be barbarians if they learned the language and accepted the appropriate rules of behavior.
