Tributary system of China

Mural from the Qianling Mausoleum in Shaanxi, 706. Foreign ambassadors are being received at court. The bald man in the middle is from the West and the man to his right is from Korea.

The tributary system was a network of loose international relations focused on China which facilitated trade and foreign relations by acknowledging China's predominant role in East Asia. It involved multiple relationships of trade, military force, diplomacy and ritual. The other nations had to come to China on schedule, kowtow to the Emperor as a form of tribute, and acknowledge his superiority and precedence. The other countries followed China's formal ritual in order to keep the peace with the more powerful neighbor. At home they did not accept China's claims of of hierarchy and subordination/ Political actors within the tributary system were largely autonomous and in almost all cases, virtually independent. Although generally applied to all Chinese polities, this system only existed in the late Ming and early to middle Qing dynasties.

Definition

The "tribute system" as a term is strictly speaking, a Western invention. There was no equivalent term in the Chinese lexicon to describe what would be considered the "tribute system" today, nor was it envisioned as an institution or system. John King Fairbank created the "tribute system" theory in postwar United States to describe "a set of ideas and practices developed and perpetuated by the rulers of China over many centuries." The Fairbank model espouses the tribute system as an extension of the hierarchic and nonegalitarian Confucian social order. The more Confucian the actors, the more likely they were to participate in the tributary system.

The "tribute system" is often associated with a "Confucian world order", under which neighboring states complied and participated in the "tribute system" to secure guarantees of peace, investiture, and trading opportunities. Actors engaged in the "tribute system" by performing "symbolic obeisance". One member acknowledged another's position as superior, and the superior would bestow investiture to confirm their status as a part of the system. Actors within the "tribute system" were virtually autonomous and carried out their own agendas despite sending tribute, as was the case with Japan, Korea, Ryukyu Kingdom, and Vietnam. Nor did they necessarily subscribe to a sinocentric world or mimic Chinese institutions in cases such as the Inner Asians who manipulated Chinese tribute practices without adopting China's political system.

History

A Chinese merchant ship (Tosen Zu).

Tributary relations emerged during the Tang dynasty as Chinese rulers started perceiving foreign envoys bearing tribute as a "token of conformity to the Chinese world order".

The Ming founder Hongwu Emperor adopted a maritime prohibition policy and issued tallies to "tribute-bearing" embassies for missions. Missions were subject to limits on the number of persons and items allowed.

In 1404, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu accepted the Chinese title "King of Japan" while not being the Emperor of Japan. The Shogun was the de facto ruler of Japan. The Emperor of Japan was a weak, powerless figurehead during the feudal shogunate periods of Japan, and was at the mercy of the Shogun. For a brief period until Yoshimitsu's death in 1408, Japan was an official tributary of the Ming dynasty. This relationship ended in 1549 when Japan, unlike Korea, chose to end its recognition of China's regional hegemony and cancel any further tribute missions. Yoshimitsu was the first and only Japanese ruler in the early modern period to accept a Chinese title. Membership in the tributary system was a prerequisite for any economic exchange with China; in exiting the system, Japan relinquished its trade relationship with China. Under the rule of the Wanli Emperor, Ming China quickly interpreted the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) as a challenge and threat to the Imperial Chinese tributary system.

Kyrgyz deliver a white horse as a gift to the Qianlong Emperor of China (1757), soon after the Qing conquest of Xinjiang. Soon, intensive trade started in Kulja and Chuguchak, Kyrgyz horses, sheep and goats being traded for Chinese silk and cotton fabrics.

The Manchus invaded Joseon (Korea) and forced it to become a tributary in 1636, due to Joseon's continued support and loyalty to Ming, and then conquered China to establish the Qing dynasty. However, the Manchus, whose ancestors had been subordinate to Korean kingdoms, were viewed as barbarians by the Korean court, which, regarding itself as the new "Confucian ideological center" in place of Ming, continued to use the Ming calendar in defiance of Qing, despite sending tribute missions. Meanwhile, Japan avoided direct contact with Qing China and instead manipulated embassies from neighboring Joseon and Ryukyu to make it falsely appear as though they came to pay tribute.

According to a 2018 study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution covering Vietnam-China relations from 1365 to 1841, the relations could be characterized as a "hierarchic tributary system". The study found that "the Vietnamese court explicitly recognized its unequal status in its relations with China through a number of institutions and norms. Vietnamese rulers also displayed very little military attention to their relations with China. Rather, Vietnamese leaders were clearly more concerned with quelling chronic domestic instability and managing relations with kingdoms to their south and west."

Thailand was always subordinate to China as a vassal or a tributary state since the Sui dynasty until the Taiping Rebellion of the late Qing dynasty in the mid-19th century. The Sukhothai Kingdom established official relations with the Yuan dynasty during the reign of King Ram Khamhaeng. Wei Yuan, the 19th century Chinese scholar, considered Thailand to be the strongest and most loyal of China's Southeast Asian tributaries, citing the time when Thailand offered to directly attack Japan to divert the Japanese in their planned invasions of Korea and the Asian mainland, as well as other acts of loyalty to the Ming dynasty. Thailand was welcoming and open to Chinese immigrants, who dominated commerce and trade, and achieved high positions in the government.

Tributary relations

See also: List of tributaries of Imperial China and Emperor Inside, King Outside

Rejection

Kingdoms along China's North-Western Frontier often struggled to enter the Imperial tributary system. Beijing often rejected tribute missions, and then lavished gifts and benefits to help soothe the drawn-out and complex conflicts now known as the Ming-Turpan Border Wars.

Mansur then abandoned large-scale military expeditions, though he continued to sanction raids on China to attain his objectives. Instead he offered tribute, occasionally dispatching a dozen or more embassies a year. He was apparently eager to obtain the Chinese gifts granted to foreign embassies, and therefore limited his incursions.

Arbitration

Warfare between tributary states was arbitrated by the Chinese emperor. Malacca and Vietnam were both tributaries to China. Malacca sent envoys to China again in 1481 to inform the Chinese that while going back to Malacca in 1469 from a trip to China, the Vietnamese attacked them, castrating the young and enslaving them. The Malaccans reported that Vietnam was in control of Champa and also that the Vietnamese sought to conquer Malacca, but the Malaccans did not fight back because of a lack of permission from the Chinese to engage in war. The Chinese Emperor scolded them, ordering the Malaccans to strike back with violent force if the Vietnamese attacked.

Non-intervention

The Ming dynasty declined to intervene under the isolationist and anti-interventionist Hongwu Emperor when the Vietnamese attacked Champa, giving only a rebuke. The Chinese again did not intervene in the 1471 Vietnamese invasion of Champa, when Vietnam destroyed Champa. Both Vietnam and Champa were tributary states.

Investiture

Members of the Chinese "tributary system" were often invested with patents of authority. As early as ancient China, investiture was given to non-Chinese neighbors as a concrete expression of the loose reign policy. The rulers of Joseon in particular sought to legitimate their rule through reference to Chinese symbolic authority. On the opposite side of the tributary relationship spectrum was Japan, whose leaders could hurt their own legitimacy by identifying with Chinese authority.

Trade

The tribute system also functioned as international trade with China and could be profitable to tributary members, as was the case with Korea. Thus, there was an economic incentive to be a member of the tributary system.

Replicating the tribute system

During the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1945), Vietnam's rulers copied the Imperial Chinese system, declaring themselves Emperors on the Chinese Confucian model and attempting to create a Vietnamese Imperial tributary system.

See also

• Emperor of China
• List of recipients of tribute from China
• List of tributaries of China
• Ming dynasty
• Tian (Heaven) / Shangdi (God)
  • Tian Xia (All Under of Heaven)
  • Tian Chao (Dynasty of Heaven)
  • Tian Kehan (Khan of Heaven)
  • Tian Ming (Mandate of Heaven)
  • Tian Zi (Son of Heaven)
• Tributary state

References

Sources

• Vohra, Ranbir (1999), China's Path to Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present (3rd ed.), Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-080747-8
• Yu, Ying-shih (1967), Trade and Expansion in Han China, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, retrieved June 20, 2011 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |loacation= (help)
• Sima, Qian; Watson, Burton (1993), Burton Watson (ed.), Records of the grand historian: Han dynasty, vol. 2 (3rd ed.), Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08167-7, retrieved June 20, 2011 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hussain, A Imtiaz (2004), Tyranny of soft touches: interculturalism, multiculturalism, and 21st century international relations, Universidad Iberoamericana, ISBN 968-859-538-1, retrieved June 20, 2011 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
• Lee, Ji-Young (2017), China's Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination, Columbia University Press
• Smits, Gregory (1999), Visions of Ryukyu: identity and ideology in early-modern thought and politics, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 0-8248-2037-1, retrieved June 20, 2011 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
• Britannica, Educational Publishing (2010), Kenneth Pletcher (ed.), The History of China, The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 1-61530-181-X, retrieved June 20, 2011 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
• Rossabi, Morris (Oct 15, 1976). "Mansur". In Goodrich, L Carrington (ed.). Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644, Association for Asian Studies. Vol. 2. Columbia University Press. pp. 1037–1038. ISBN 0-231-03801-1. Retrieved June 24, 2011. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Cohen, Warren I. . East Asia at the Center : Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. ISBN 0231101082.
• Fairbank, John K., and Ssu-yu Teng. "On the Ch'ing tributary system." Harvard journal of Asiatic studies 6.2 (1941): 135-246. online
• Kang, David C., et al. "War, Rebellion, and Intervention under Hierarchy: Vietnam–China Relations, 1365 to 1841." Journal of Conflict Resolution 63.4 (2019): 896-922. online
• Kang, David C. "International Order in Historical East Asia: Tribute and Hierarchy Beyond Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism." International Organization (2019): 1-29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818319000274
• Song, Nianshen (Summer 2012). "'Tributary' from a Multilateral and Multilayered Perspective". Chinese Journal of International Politics. 5 (2): 155–182. doi:10.1093/cjip/pos005. Retrieved 11 July 2016.
• Swope, Kenneth M. "Deceit, Disguise, and Dependence: China, Japan, and the Future of the Tributary System, 1592–1596." International History Review 24.4 (2002): 757-782.
• Wills, John E. Past and Present in China's Foreign Policy: From "Tribute System" to "Peaceful Rise". (Portland, ME: MerwinAsia, 2010. ISBN 9781878282873.
• Womack, Brantly. "Asymmetry and China's tributary system." Chinese Journal of International Politics 5.1 (2012): 37-54. online
• Zhang, Yongjin, and Barry Buzan. "The tributary system as international society in theory and practice." Chinese Journal of International Politics 5.1 (2012): 3-36.