Choices of political actors are often determined by the accumulated experience of their civilization. When the Northerners who ruled the Central Plains in the fourth to the sixth century positioned themselves as the rightful heirs to the Chinese civilization, they did it following the logic of integration which influenced China’s civilizational trajectory through much of its history. When, by contrast, the Germanic tribes established independent polities in post-Roman Europe, their choice reflected the internal logic of European experience, that is, the experience of a polycentric world.