In Chua's Day of Empire, she talks about how the Roman empire was the only empire which has solved the problem of "glue", or creating the sense of "Roman Identity" among the subjects from everywhere within this vast empire, and this common, shared identity serves to "glue" them together as "Roman" and therefore, preventing them from wanting to break away fairly quickly as all the other subjects of past empires did.
My hypothesis to resolve this "glue" riddle for the Roman Empire is this: Most citizens were not "ethnically" Roman to begin with, as Rome, originally a city state just like all the other Italian cities (Florence, Venice, etc) was such a small percentage of population of the vast Empire. Thus, everybody had this consensus or common understanding that to be a Roman citizen is truly just a "legal identity", not a racial, or genetic or even geographical identity.
Therefore, the Spanish "Roman citizen" was as "Roman" as the Egyptian "Roman Citizen", or the British "Roman citizen", they are essentially all equals, no groups have particular "stronger" claim to be Roman citizens than any other groups within the Roman Empire (except the slaves, of course).
Same cannot be said about the other super powers/empires, where the ethnicities of the "Conquerors" were a strong part of the identity of the whole empire. They were the "upper/master class", the elites, the rulers, versus the subjugated, the conquered, the "peasantry" or even worse, the "underclass", which often characterised the situation of the conquered peoples. Thus the "conquered" usually wanted out, or to rebel at their earliest opportunity in a bid to escape the oppressive treatments from the "ruling" ethnic group.
I disagree with Amy Chua's prediction on China have not got the potential to be a hyperpower, as defined in her book of Day of Empire, because I think she has a wrong assumption about the Chinese character.
With all due respect, I believe Amy could understand the Chinese reasonably well based on the fact that she is ethnically Chinese. However, Amy has this brave assumption that Chinese "believe" what defines "China" is based on the Chinese ethnicity/blood. We all know about Japan's intolerance of immigration and their inclination to maintain the "pure blood" quality of Japan and therefore, maybe that led Amy Chua to assume that Chinese has the same propensity of lack of tolerance for immigrants.
As a Hong Kong Chinese most of my life, I believe the Chinese have great potential of welcoming foreigners not only to live with them but to settle (for generations) with them. My observation is mostly based on the Hong Kong Chinese culture. With our colonial history, Hong Kong has a great percentage of foreigners settled happily and peacefully with the Hong Kong Chinese and there has never been any problems (racial conflicts nor discrimination) whatsoever.
Maybe it's just Hong Kong (but same can be said about Vancouver Chinese, from which I spent most of the rest of my life in). An interesting anecdote is that some mainland Chinese companies even "faked" hiring foreign-looking workers, in a bid to make their firms look more "international". Racial Intolerance? I don't think so.
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