Question

How did the Chinese view their country’s place in the world ?

Answer 1

China would much prefer to keep it to ourselves. Chinese people, by nature and culture, are not aggressive, and don't like open direct conflict. Our culture is very reserved and implicit. There're much pride when dealing with western powers, after all, we are the civilized world and the western people are bunch of barbarians who use small weapon as tableware. There's a deep rooted sense of "center of the world" and entitlement for 5000 years (more or less), mixed up with the shame and humiliation since the first Opium War in 1840s.  

When it comes to western powers, Chinese people has mix feeling about it, especially with the US. At one hand, we are fascinated by America, the super power of the world, movies/TV shows, music, fashion, pop culture... Everything is so interesting. On the other hand, US just can't leave us alone for 1 minute, they constantly scrutinizing our human rights, problem with Tibet, and they turn Taiwan against us. None of these are US's business.  

Bottom line is, neither regular citizen, nor the government wants to be dominate world super power. We really don't care. Most Chinese people just want to live a better life, buy apartment, get married, have kids... very much like regular Americans or other western people. As for Chinese government, as evil as the western make it look, it really just wants to maintain its iron control of China, keep being the manufacture of the world, making knock off handbags and running shoes, and nothing more (not right now at least). And trust me, controlling 1.3 billing people is already hard enough.  

Answer 2

Throughout most of China's history, the region was significantly more developed than the areas that surrounded it. This led the Chinese to believe themselves to be superior to the rest of the world. They were aware of the fact that the art, culture and technology of China was much more developed than that of most other places. They also thought that there was very little they could learn from other places. This made them reluctant to adopt cultural traits from other countries.