Sorry for the title gore if there's any, as English is not my language.
Here's a little bit of background about my question. My history teacher told me that, in Imperial China, from Qin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty, there were only eight countries that China see them as a country, and were granted the status "国", which means a country.
The eight countries are:
Now if I look back, I find that most of the big empires are not granted the status "国", like Persian Empire are just 波斯, India is 天竺, Majapahit is 满者伯夷 and etc. There is neither "国" nor "朝" in their name.
So leads to my question, does Imperial China ever view other foreign countries as equal to China?
As an added, semi-related question, I remember reading that China called the Roman Empire Daqin (大秦) with the impression the book in question gave me being that the name basically boiled down to "the other China". Is that an accurate summary?
Imperial China covers more than 2000 years of history, and I unfortunately I can't be of much help for the later empires like Qing. I can say that in Ancient and Early Medieval China, there wasn't really any barrier to calling a foreign country for a state (guo國). So for example in the chapter on the regions west of China in the Houhan Shu, an early 5th century history covering the Eastern Han empire (23 – 220 AD), Parthia is called the state of Anxi 安息國, north-western India is the state of Tianzhu天竺國, and so on, and they are ruled by kings王.
That said they were not considered the equals of the Emperor, whose sacred rule was ordained by Heaven (The word di帝 which the First Emperor of Qin appropriated for his title originally meant something closer to “god” or at least a semi-divine being), and this predates Imperial China, going back at least to Western Zhou whose ruler was the Son of Heaven. The Emperor was an universal ruler and foreign kings were expected to periodically send envoys with exotic things from their kingdoms to present as tribute.
There is one notable exception, which also answers your question. As part of the peace deal with the Xiongnu, then the dominant steppe tribal federation on the empire's northern border, Western Han had to accept that the Emperor of Han and the Shanyu of the Xiongnu were equals, and they addressed each other as brothers in their correspondence to each other. Though I suppose you could question whether Han courtiers really thought of the Shanyu as their Emperor's equal, or if it was an insult they had to endure. Later on, when a civil war for leadership broke out among the Xiongnu, the Han only agreed to help one of the claimants in return for his submission as a vassal ruler.
Does this have anything to do with the eight nation alliance foreign intervention during the Boxer Rebellion? As those are the 8 countries that participated. Is that what gave them the status required to use that symbol?
It's odd that your history teacher left out, well, history in talking about Chinese history. First, Qin to Qing dynasties cover 2000 years China and the world changed a lot over that long stretch of time. So ideas about "country" (guo) changed to. It's a bit of a strange statement your teacher made because "Italy," "USA," "Austria-Hungary," "Empire of Japan" were all 19th century constructions. It sounds like the teacher is really talking about the era of high imperialism in the nineteenth century, when the European Great Powers, plus the USA and Japn, started to penetrate China by first invoking new Western ideas of sovereignty. This clashed with Chinese ideas of sovereignty based on the tributary system.