Europe tried to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world more than anyone else. That’s the difference. Again, was it about control out of insecurity or did they do it for fun? I’m giving the lesser of two evils. If you like the worst one…
I'm not trying to whitewash what western imperialism did, for "god's" shake. i'm trying to say that western history isn't as flat as you may think. My homeplace in modern greece was being constantly looted for ages, especially after the fall of Byzantines. Fun fact that everyone speaks about Ottoman occupation, but no one mentions the Frankish and Venetian occupation, maybe because they were "Christian bros", They were the good looters. lol But i'm not siding with any royalty anyway, i stand with average "servi" feudal era enslaved peasant who was paying the price of the repeated looting and devastation.
No they didn't. Race is about a belief in having a certain genetic descent. The Chinese understanding of identity was based solely on values and norms, not genealogical descent, and 'civilized' status was not guaranteed to any group of people. For instance, Chinese people who failed to adhere to proper ethics were always considered barbarians. (cf. Shaoyun Yang, The Way of the Barbarians, 2019) The only exception was during times of invasion from non-Han peoples who claimed to be a legitimate part of the Chinese people, such as the Jurchens, the defending side would counter that ancestry was necessary to become civilized. Korean identity was also based on the same parameters, and Koreans self-consciously understood that they did not have genealogical claims to greatness, only cultural, but even then after a few generations they would acknowledge their own cultural inferiority again. Edo period Japan also used the same logic where they claimed that preserving Zhou dynasty values is what made them special, in spite of openly having no genetic connection to them. Even militarist Japan in WW2 was different from the European case as they encouraged Japanese women to intermarry with the imperial subjects to spread Japanese culture, an unthinkable prospect in the West where other races were fit only to be used as mistresses.
Come on we know that genealogical, divine and so on ruling is a crude excuse for certain people to maintain their boot on the neck of other people. I can tell you the the story of the biggest city of Greek antiquity which was not Sparta nor Athens. It was Nicopolis a 100.000 Roman city built from scratch to commemorate the victory of one Roman emperor over another who claimed the throne. Romans gathered and enforced people from a whole region to built it and then they granted them a full Roman citizenship just for fun, no bloodlines at all, except from the workers of course

Ancients were bloody funny in many ways. Inter-Royal marriages was the most common tradition in European diplomacy — apart from wars, of course. As far as written language is concerned, that also constitutes a form of diplomacy. Soft power, in a sense. In the case of the interaction between, for example, the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian and Russian empires, there were also intermarriages, family alliances, etc., but the Cyrillic alphabet also emerged — the written form of the Slavic languages, created by Byzantine monks. As for Japanese claims about Zhou dynasty it's like Roman Empire and Byzantium. There was not of course a direct blood continuation. It's about the "legal and political entity claims" of the times. Which family got their hands on the treasuries. Roman empire ceased to exist in 1453. Anyone called them Romans, they considered themselves Roman even if they spoke Greek and where christians. LoL. This apply of course to certain families, not the "servi". Me as a proud proletarian, i consider my self bloodline connected with those people-serviis- . After the fall of the Romans, The Ottomans imposed area denial to the East and Europe turned the darker page of it's history when turned overseas.
Even militarist Japan in WW2 was different from the European case as they encouraged Japanese women to intermarry with the imperial subjects to spread Japanese culture, an unthinkable prospect in the West where other races were fit only to be used as mistresses.
At this point i think you are gravely wronging the Korean and Chinese people by claiming this — especially the women.
Sorry for the offtopic, thanks for the conversation!