Yuri Pines, professor of Chinese studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: "Thinkers during China's Warring States Period (475-221 BC) realized that no state could solve its problems alone.
"In conditions of constant competition and struggle, there can be no security for a single country without taking into consideration 'all under heaven' — the broader world order," Pines said.
"In the Warring States, the solution was to unify the entire Tianxia, or 'all the world' in a single universal state. Today, this can be reinterpreted as something akin to 'cosmopolitanism', or the idea that individual problems cannot be solved without considering broader global challenges," he said. "This logic, I think, is very relevant to the global initiatives of development and security."
Pines said the diversity of the Hundred Schools of Thought during China's classical period fostered a worldview that did not insist on a single exclusive truth to be imposed on everyone, and that could facilitate mutual learning between civilizations.
