>What's different, though, is that China is now looking outward. In the past, China was mostly concerned with itself, it has now learned that it can't afford to ignore the rest of the world.
There was opportunity to learn this lesson before. Why is it different now?
> There was opportunity to learn this lesson before.
China sent off Admiral Zheng He to discover the world before Columbus. He sailed off with a huge armada of ships (as far as East Africa), reported back with some giraffes and such, and the emperor concluded that it wasn't worth it, and reverted to inward focus.
After the "century of humiliation" and being eclipsed by the west, the "lesson" is obvious now. That's different.
China got broken in the Opium Wars and all the colonialism that followed it. That's something that hadn't happened before. China has learned that it must be more like the European colonial powers in order to protect itself from them.
For what it's worth, the word/concept globalisation is much more mainstream now
Globalisation is very much a westerner attitude and a neo-liberalist effect, though; a more neutral term is mondialisation, from French, which is regaining traction as an ideology for a peaceful path towards a single government for planet Earth (http://www.mondialism.com)
French isn't a Western language?
What's different, though, is that China is now looking outward. In the past, China was mostly concerned with itself, it has now learned that it can't afford to ignore the rest of the world.