II. In the beginning, civilization was like a candle lit against darkness, its lonely glow only able to illuminate the immediate surroundings. If a single candle is lit in a large space, it is easily extinguished by wind or rain. It was only when the lights of early civilizations were successively lit across nearby regions and were able to shine brightly together that those civilizations were able to survive and grow. Therefore, mutual support was a necessary condition for the survival of ancient civilizations, indicating that interaction made the emergence of civilization possible.

Civilizations grew out of small areas that we call the birthplaces of civilization. Through mutual exchange and contact, these areas continued to expand until they became culture circles, and different culture circles began to communicate with one another. This is a historical process of isolation to integration, and it shows us that a sense of a shared future was conceived in the smallest areas before expanding to eventually reach all corners of the world.

It was Chinese historians who introduced the theory that world history developed from isolation to integration in simultaneously temporal and spatial terms. This theory offers a highly condensed summary of the patterns of historical development and change, and adopts a historical perspective to expound on the process in which humanity developed from isolation to integration and eventually connected to form a whole.

From small areas to large areas, large areas to culture circles, and from these circles to the whole world – this is how civilizations grow. Through this process and after several millennia of evolution, the emergence of capitalism was preceded by the existence of several major culture circles. These mainly included those of East Asia, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa, and Europe, as well as the budding civilization of American Indians. Every culture circle contained several sub or sub-sub culture circles, as well as even smaller cultural paradigms. These culture circles, sub culture circles, and sub-sub culture circles shared similarities in some aspects yet also maintained their uniqueness; they were extraordinarily diverse, and together formed a riotously colorful world. At that time, relations between different civilizations were equal. Despite the long distances between civilizations, and their lack of mutual understanding or even prior interaction, all civilizations had their own distinctive features, and there was no one civilization that was considered superior to the rest.

This landscape was altered when capitalism first appeared in Western Europe. In the late Middle Ages, a process of reunification began in Western Europe, during which a fragmented Europe under feudalism was unified based on location, forming "nation-states." The nation-state was a new form of country, and was different from all "countries" that had previously existed in the world. With the national community as its political support (political vessel) and national identity as its theoretical support (theoretical vessel), the nation-state thus combined the political and theoretical vessels. Supported by these nation-states, the West began its contemporary rise, thereby changing the state of affairs in which the East was advanced and the West backward that had existed for more than a thousand years.

And so it went that from around the year 1500, the world witnessed great changes, and a new civilization emerged in the West. Driven by capital and the market, this civilization expanded across the globe without constraints. A new kind of ideology began to dominate society – capital was the axis around which industry and commerce revolved, worship of God turned into worship of money, and science and technology were the tools of capital. It was around this time that the theory of Western-centrism was introduced, from which the idea of universal values emerged subsequently. The true meaning of universal values is to equate the West with the world, and to make the whole world follow the Western path, which is the death of cultural diversity.

With the discovery of new sea routes, Western countries began to expand and colonize new lands with increasing ferocity. However, after the Industrial Revolution broke out and capital joined hands with industrial forces to sweep across the globe, the world was powerless to resist. After centuries of struggle, by the end of the 19th century the world had been carved apart and Western hegemony had been established. It seemed that the time-honored system of coexistence between different civilizations had reached its end, and from the ashes emerged the theory of cultural superiority, which regarded Western civilization as advanced and other civilizations as backward. According to this theory, Western civilization would one day dominate the whole world, which would be reshaped in line with the Western model. However, history and reality have repeatedly disproved this theory.