Exactly. They were convinced there was nothing worth learning from the barbarians.

The Maltese do it all the time. We should be careful.

They failed to innovate because of this and were overtaken.

The Chinese superiority was lost due to reliance on certainty, and an exclusion of anything that wasn’t point-to-point thinking.

They have been advised to steer clear of certainty in their strategy development and to focus on “provocation.”

Strangely enough, the best-counter strategy to this new strategy of provocation “by any which way”, remains Sun Tzu.

1. The Chinese believe that any territory which was under Chinese rule at any time in history shall remain Chinese forever. If they cannot take it back it today, they will in 500 years. See the tensions China created with most, if not all, of its neighbors on territorial issues.

2. It is said that until the end of the Ming dynasty, which coincided more or less with the first interactions (of importance and significance) between China and the West, there was a shared belief among the Chinese that whoever was not Chinese was necessarily unhappy and unfortunate.

Its the thing I fear most – that we’ll become a “China fil-Mediterran” with all that it entails.

A comment that made me cringe with fear was when a person told me “Life in China is not as bad as its made out to be”. Oh, really?

Why not move over there then?

It is a system which abuses its own people.