Hierarchy, status and international society: China and the steppe nomads
While pre-modern China’s relations with her Sinic neighbours have been described as a distinctive variant of the English School’s international society based on a shared Confucian culture and a China-centred tributary system, her relations with her nomadic neighbours, including the Hsiung-nu, Turks, Uighurs and Mongols, have often been characterized as purely power-political, Hobbesian and lacking any societal foundation.