It's no secret that China occupies a massive place in today's world, and carries a great deal of weight that tends to be measured primarily in economic and geopolitical terms. However, I think we need to look beyond the figures and the pure balance of power, and take a long-term view. On the other hand, it seems to me equally important not to follow the media's tendency to speak of " China " as an entity existing from all eternity, isolated and self-sufficient, but to place it in a wider space of circulation where it necessarily enters into interaction with other entities, where it stumbles over its limits, where it finds itself confronted with critical eyes and questioned about itself. For so long - and still today - China has been portrayed as the great Other in the European imagination, and so often described as closed to all outside influence, entrenched behind its Great Wall. Has this China not been more diverse, more cosmopolitan than has been said ? Has it not been aware of being part of the world rather than a world unto itself, long before the recent intrusion of European colonial powers ?
In fact, over the last few years, we've been probing and questioning China's claim to universality from a variety of angles. It is precisely this question of Chinese universality and its limits that will now occupy us. This work is all the more important as China's claim to universality is making a comeback in the current context of globalization, and has been the subject of extremely virulent debate in China itself in recent years. In the years to come, we shall be examining how this Chinese-style universality has been constituted, but also how it has been decentralized, notably in its contacts with India, and how it has been contested, particularly in its interaction with Japan. These are two of China's main neighbors, one to the east, the other to the west, each of which, in its own way, has played a decisive role in its cultural history.