ABSTRACT
Government of the barbarians along the borders was left to their own chiefs, who were placated with resounding Chinese titles. The Chinese were no longer ready to go out and meet the foreigner halfway, and Matteo Ricci wrote of them that although they "could easily conquer the neighboring nations, neither the King nor his people ever think of waging a war of aggression. Chinese ships kept to coastal waters, and Chinese subjects were forbidden to leave the country. The Chinese had reached East Africa more than half a century before the Portuguese were to sail into the Indian Ocean. The threat of foreign aggression, real or invented, has always been a court card in the Chinese power game, whether held by foreigners or by China's rulers. And this is all the more true when there are 800,000,000 Chinese, and even the pursuit of the ideal classless and selfless Communist society is inspired by a specifically Chinese socialism.
