Abstract
This paper addresses the usual arguments regarding China's unique status, yet within the periphery of theworld system, and in keeping with parts of the world colonized by Western powers. This paper reports that in some respects China is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal environment that defies most comprehensive theory. However, foreign economic and political interests, in contrast with Chinese domestic instability, created the near loss of Chinese control over events within her borders, and towards the new isolationism of Chinese Communism after 1949.

From the Paper
"In the People's Republic of China one continues to find a civilization that has too often been mistaken for a mere country. Before the growth in European and American influence in coastal China in the first half of the 19th century, China pursued an intellectual and official aim of isolationism, but this should always be examined in the light of forever busy coastal and other trading, and in relation to overseas Chinese business communities that could be sources of new ideas and a degree of economic inter-relatedness. China managed to escape foreign rule as known in other colonized parts of Asia, but this did not mean independence or control over her economic and political affairs."

Tags:china19, 20th, periphery, externaldir