"Viewing China (Hua) as the centre of the world, or “Middle Kingdom," differentiated from the cultural or ethnic barbarians (Yi), Sino-centrism—or the so-called “Sino-barbarian dichotomy" (Hua-Yi zhi bian, the dis tinction between Hua and Yi)—took root as the fundamental worldview and diplomatic mentality of imperial China. According to the “Royal Regulations” (Wangzhi) of The Book of Rites (Liji), the Chinese territory occupied the heart of civilization; while the peripheral tribes and nations from four directions, Eastern Yi, Western Rong, Southern Man and Northern Di, were viewed as less civilized, if not barbarians. While emperors of China were heralded as the “Sons of Heaven" in the “Celestial Empire" (Tianchao), other nations were relegated to tributaries. This mentality was exhibited in the Qing Qianlong Emperor’s (1711—99) cold-shouldered response to George Macartney (1737—1806), the British envoy to China in 1793 for the claimed establishment of free trade and equal diplomatic relationship.
It was also commonplace for the official documents and correspondences to address the Westerners as “barbarians” or “foreign barbarians.” Deng Tingzhen (1776—1846), governor of Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces, reported the movements of British ships in his 1837 memorial to the throne that there were designated sites for the ships of “foreign barbarians” (waiyi) to drop anchor. The “foreign barbarians" were frequently further degraded as the “red-haired” (hongmao) or “foreign devils" (fangui)... In 1755 the provincial authorities of Zhejiang recommended to the Qing court that the ships of the British merchant James Flint should be received “with compassion" as the ships of the “Red Hair,” the nickname for the English and the Dutch. Against the context of anti-Christian incidents in Guangdong Province in the 1890s, Zheng Xianchen, while commenting on the Westerners’ vicious activities, made the denunciation that “the foreign devils have sent accomplices to China to drop poison.
The above deep-rooted Chinese worldview and Western image, specifically toward the British, are manifested in Right and Wrong and Great Britain. The former novel reveals its basic tone by the opening remarks of Li Jinbing, a non-Christian character, who calls Britain a place of the “red-haired foreign devils” (hongmao fangui) (p. 2); while in that novel foreigners are perceived by Chinese officials as “barbarians" (yiren) possessing “deceitful and eccentric traits" (qiqing guijue) (p. 5). Similarly in Great Britain, Li Quande, a non-Christian character, looks down upon the British by asserting that “[t]he red-haired are barbarians,” and that they are merely “beast-like," (you qinshou) “godless," (wu shen) “kingless,” (wu jun) and “ignorant of the five cardinal human relationships” (feizhi wulun zhi li) (Ch. 1, p. 3). These comments reflected the negative image of the British people as “barbarians," “foreign devils," and “red-haired" commonly held among contemporary Chinese people, and the Qing court was accused as the main culprit for intensifying such a despicable and xenophobic attitude...
During the early nineteenth century, both the Qing court and most common people embraced an entrenched Sinocentric worldview of the “Celestial Empire" and a perception of “barbarians" and “foreign devils.”"
--- Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China/ John T. P. Lai
Oddly, this guy claimed that Michael Petraeus talking about how torture of Westerners caused the coalition to burn down the Summer Palace and the Chinese viewing non-Chinese as barbarians were proof that he was a White Supremacist.
