In Chinese history, foreign visitors to the imperial court were often treated as “barbarians” who were expected to pay tribute to the emperor. There are echoes of this in the way that modern China’s leaders engage with the rest of the world, as I discovered in November 2013, as part of a small group of visitors received by President Xi Jinping in Beijing. There were plenty of eminent people in the group, including former prime ministers such as Gordon Brown of Britain, and Mario Monti of Italy, as well a smattering of western billionaires. Yet the foreign grandees were treated a bit like a class of schoolchildren.
在中國歷史上，中國人往往將到訪中國宮廷的外國人當成“蠻夷”對待，認為他們理應向中國皇帝朝貢。這與現代中國領導人對外交往的方式存在遙相呼應之處，正如2013年11月我作為一群外國訪問者中的一員，在北京受到中國國家主席習近平接見時所發現的那樣。這些訪問者中有很多顯赫人物，其中包括英國前首相戈登?布朗(Gordon Brown)和意大利前總理馬里奧?蒙蒂(Mario Monti)，還有多位西方億萬富翁。然而，這些外國大人物卻被當成小學生一樣對待。