All things considered, it may safely be said that Chinese civilization as a whole was influenced surprisingly little by Mongol rule. It was, however, responsible for a certain deviation from accepted standards of
ethical behaviour as far as the law and government were concerned. The autocratic and totalitarian features of China under the Ming dynasty are perhaps to be attributed to the fact that the country had been under barbarian rule for more than a century.
The Mongols themselves, taken as a group, remained largely aloof from Chinese culture. A number became proficient Chinese scholars, however, and their poems and
calligraphy were on par with native Chinese. The later emperors, after some initial efforts under Kublai, encouraged translations from Chinese into Mongol, and the earliest specimens of printing in Mongol were produced in China. Most of these translations are now lost as a consequence of Ming nationalism, but the few existing fragments, mostly Buddhist texts, are of the highest importance for the history of the Mongol language. The Mongols were expelled from China in or soon after 1368. For the next two centuries they lived in
Mongolia just as they had before their conquests: a warlike nomad people with only a few traces of their long sojourn among the Chinese.