In April 12 of 2017, during the behind-the-door session of the summit in Florida, Xi Jin Ping of the Chinese Communist Party gave a private lecture to the President Trump about the ancient history between Korea and China that the ancient Korea used to be a part of China. It is highly probable the CCP leader made the argument on the basis of the tributary system practiced in the ancient East Asia. Trump was as much a virgin as your Tom next door about the East Asian history and his summary of the lesson after the meeting infuriated Koreans so much.
The incident was not an isolated event regarding the sensitive subject now that rampant in the internet space is the view that attempts to define all the East Asian states in ancient times as vassal or subordinate to Chinese dynasties, even as part of China, on the basis of the tributary system that existed in those ancient times.
Now, it is about time we have an objective and balanced view in the interpretation of the ancient practice based on the evidence and written records, to know whether the Xi's lecture was just another fraud or whether the Korean people's indignation was simply a response of national emotion and pride in denial of the historical truth.
Before we go over to the specific cases of Japan and Korea, it would be worthwhile to know how the unique East Asian practice came into being in the first place to have a better understanding of the nature of the ancient practice in the East Asia.
There is a record of the conversation remaining that tells much about the nature of the tributary system when it was first thought up by the ancient Chinese. It was basically designed to buy the border security and political influence from the neighbor countries by way of paying more than the value of their staples so that the neighbor states come and visit their state voluntarily for commercial profit while the visited party playing out the higher status. On top of the cost from the transactions, whereby the tributes were bought at premium to attract the tributaries, the Chinese dynasties had to prohibit the private trade and commerce in the border areas strictly, leaving no legal means of trade other than the tributary transaction with China for the neighboring countries.
In the book Guanzi (管子) on the historical figure who lived around 7C BC, in the Spring and Autumn period, the King of the country Qi 濟桓公, afraid of the neighboring “Barbarians” not showing signs of obeisance and of their possible attacks, asks how he could make the neighboring countries come before him to show respect. The Guanzi’s answer was to pay more than the value for their staples so that they come on their foot for profit.+
+桓公曰 四夷不服 恐其逆政 游於天下 而傷寡人 寡人之行 爲此有道乎。 管子對曰 吳越不朝 珠象而以爲幣乎。發·朝鮮不朝 請文皮毤【他臥切 落毛也。】服而以爲幣乎。 … … 一豹之皮 容金而金也 然後八千里之發朝鮮可得而朝也。 … 故物無主 事無接 遠近無以相因 則四夷不得而朝矣。…………………………. From the record, we know China at the time imported from ancient Korea the clothes along with their mink furs, which can be a clue for the cultural topology in the region of the time between the two polities. Ancient Korean State called Gojoseon was located in the lower Manchuria with its southern border near today’s Beijing. Noteworthy would be that this conversation was made before the Confucius’ time.
So, basically it was a diplomatic formality of Chinese invention, hammered out of the border trade in nature. So, it needs to be understood as a form of international trade, especially from the viewpoint of the tribute donors, not as the master-vassal relationship some would wish to paint the system as, especially with the recent resurrection of the Sinocentric views on the East Asian history in China. The tributary system was not meant to infringe on the sovereign rights of the tributary from the start and it did not play out that way either during the millennia of its practice.
Given the nature of the system as was designed to be in its birth, it was only natural that the system was not free for the tribute recipient. It costed to maintain the tributary relationship for many Chinese dynasties, especially with the politically important states such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The cost could be justified not solely for the peaceful relationship with neiboring countries, but for the domestic politics. The tribute from those important neighbors served as an endorsement on the legitimacy of a newly born dynasty within China, so the first thing the fledgeling dynasties did when they had subdued their power contestants was secure the tributary relationship with important neighbor countries.
China had to pay back much more in value to its important neighbors to sustain the system. Sometimes, they had to let slide the disgrace of getting ostentatiously poor tribute. In 宋史 外國列傳 高麗, History of Song, chapter on Koryo in “Foreign” Countries part, shows how much of a burden it was to Song Court to make a separate gift to the Koryo ( Korea ) King in appreciation, on top of the difficulties in entertaining the missionaries and pricing the tribute commodities properly, so at one point they had to ask Koryo to skip the tribute due to the internal complaints. =
= It was more so because of the situation Song was facing. Their immediate threat was from the northern tribal powers such as Khitan and Jin, so Koryo was a state they needed to keep as ally.
1) See the relevant part in 宋史 外國列傳 高麗 in the Chinese and English translation at the end of this article. It would be noteworthy that the chapter for Koryo belonged to the the part for the Foreign Countries 外國列傳. All the Chinese history compilations dealt with the Korean states in the foreign section without exception.
2) One of the figures who stood out against the tributary relationship with Koryo was none other than Su Dongpo 蘇東坡 or 蘇軾 ( 1037~1101 ), the most renowned poet and writer in the Middle Age China. He made petitions to the Song ruler three times in his life against the tribute transactions with Koryo for its punishing burden to the people and the government coffer. In one of his petitions, he argued that tens of thousand lives of the famined people can be saved with the cost of entertaining the Koryo missionaries one time. *See the list of his petitions at the end of this article.
Now, over to the cases of Japan. Japan was a tributary state to China from the birth of their country as Japan or Nihon in a full formality. They used to try to get the endorsement from the ancient Chinese states and the trade with China was done under the framework of the tributary system.
But, the turning point in the relationship between the two countries took place in 16th century. The Ningbo Turmoil of 1523 寧波之亂 shows well the other face of the tributary relationship. The Japanese Shogun had been conferred the title of the Japanese King by the Ming court and the Japanese shipment of commodities to Ningbo was regarded as official tribute in the practice of the tributary relationship. So, in appearance Japan at the time was a vassal country of China.
Yet, in reality from the Japanese perspective, it was no more than a formality to enable the international trade, which was so profitable to become a trophy for fierce fight between powerful daimyos in Japan. Actually the overheated contest for the right for the tribute transaction, combined with the corruption of the Chinese officials, caused the months of the northbound rampage by the Japanese Daimyo forces alongside the Chinese eastern coast, that some might think as a remote harbinger of the Nanjing Massacre four hundred years later.
By an estimate in Japan, the tribute to Ming once was returned in 20 times the value of original shipment from Japan. Though not all the profit can be accounted to have been made directly at the expense of the Ming court, it must have been not a small financial burden for the Ming.
If there was a reason for Ming to have to return for the Japanese tribute more than generously, it may have been because of the Japanese pirates that had devastated the Chinese eastern coast areas for so long, that the Japanese Shogunate had promised to control in return for the trade with China in the form of tributary transaction.
So, we can say in this case the tribute system was the practice of bribery in disguise from the tribute recipient to the tributary state. It was far from the master-vassal relationship while it had not drifted away that much from the nature of the tributary system as designed by those who first thought up the system in the 7C BC, before the time of Confucius.
As for Korea, until the Koryo time ( 918 - 1392 ) the tributary system can be said to have been formality. But, from the 15th century when they started as Joseon Dynasty, its founding court and officials took Confucianism as their state ideaology. [] The new court kind of volunteered into the order of the Confucian world view, whereby the Chinese ruler was issued the sole licence to rule the world, as Son of Heaven 天子, -it may sound childish and funny, but this thought is at the core of the Sinocentricism then and now- and the tributary system was interpreted as important part of the world order.
The country, doomed with the Confucianism, was to tread the long and slow path of decline for the next 500 years until they were found by the West between China and Japan in 19th century as a sick man of Asia, still hazy in a slumber, with all the glory of the ancient states of Kori/Koguryo, Silla and Koryo long forgotten.
[] The Confucianism was a perfect political tool for the newly starting dynasty Joseon to abolish both the practice of the political engagements by the Buddhist monks and the militarian supremacy that had prevailed in Koryo Dynasty they were replacing at the end of the 14th Century.
Yet, it was during this Joseon period with Ming on the Chinese side, in the middle of 15th century, that the Korean alphabet system Hangul was invented and promulgated, which was to serve as one of the key national assets that would propel the resurgence of the Koreans into the digital age about a half millennium later. And the fact that the dissemination of the new phonetic writing system by the Joseon King-Sejong the Great- was made without any prior notice or consent, and even a notification to China thereafter, would serve as a clear evidence that the tributary system did not affect the sovereignty and autonomy of the neighboring countries. ][
][ The Joseon government tried to keep the knowledge on a new ammunition secret by way of using Hangul in place of Chinese characters in the technical descriptions, to preempt the leak of the new technology to foreigners. [-1482, 朝鮮王朝實錄 成宗13年 卷141] A promising young official was disciplined for his act of teaching Hangul to a Chinese during an official trip to China, about one hundred years after the Hangul promulgation. (-1539, 朝鮮王朝實錄 中宗 34年 卷92 )
Conclusion
- The tributary system had nothing to do with the sovereignty of the tribute donor and did not affect its autonomy. This ancient practice of Chinese invention should not be used as basis of a claim for the master-vassal relationship, which did not exist.
- So, the assertion of the Xi's lecture to Trump that "Korea used to be part of China" is a double-layered fraud, firstly by deceiving the tributary as vassal state and, secondly by concealing the fact that the records on those neighbor states had been dealt in the "Foreign Countries" section in their own historical narrations without a single exception down to the modern time. Foreign countries are not part of your country. Rather, the existence of the tributary transactions testifies that the relationship between the pertinent states was that of diplomacy betwen sovereign countries, foreign to each other.
- If CCP want to insist the master-vassal relationship on the basis of the tributary practice, they should claim all the East Asian countries, say Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and even Turkey, Kazahstan, as Chinese vassal countries. They do that selectively, revealing in the course what is the immediate target of their territorial ambition and cultural theft. It would be noteworthy that they are doing the same to Okinawa(Ryuku) these days, putting the sticker of "vassal country" 藩國 every time they refer to Okinawa in Baidu and other internal knowledge sites.
- Once they by chance happen to achieve their target of territorial rapacity with the preamble of those fraudulent historical claims, you will then get to know what has been their next goal by seeing the next game of their historical distortion. That is why you need be aware of the CCP's grisly intention behind the shoddy but tenacious undertakings for the history rewriting and distortions. That is the Chinese way that has made the China as you know it is today. They have been successful. It could only be successful in the long run as long as the rest of the world stays unawares. They had nothing to lose from the start.
Thank you.
.
Notes
1) The excerpt from 宋史 外國列傳 高麗, History of Song, treatise on Koryo in “Foreign” Countries chapter, regarding the tribute relationship with Koryo
慶元間，詔禁商人持銅錢入高麗，蓋絕之也。初，高麗入使，明、越困於供給，朝廷館遇燕齎錫予之費以钜萬計，饋其主者不在焉。我使之行，每乘二神舟，費亦不貲。三節官吏縻爵捐廩，皆仰縣官。昔蘇軾言於先朝，謂高麗入貢有五害，以此也。惟是國于吳會，事異東都。昔高麗入使，率由登、萊，山河之限甚遠，今直趨四明，四明距行都限一浙水耳。
< English Translation> During the Qingyuan Period, the edict banned merchants from entering Goryeo with copper coins, which was actually equivalent to the prohibition of the transaction with Koryo. At first when the Koryo missionaries entered, the welcoming rituals and banquets alone costed tens of thousand, yet it was before the cost for the return gift to the Koryo king. When the missionaries were sent to Koryo, they had to hire two luxury ships every time, which costed a lot, so the the involved officials had to share the cost. That is why Su Dongpo 蘇軾 made the petition to the previous ruler that there were only five harms from the tributary practice with Koryo.
2) The list of petitions by Su Dongpo 蘇東坡
- 論髙麗進奉狀, 1089 AD
- 乞禁商旅過外國狀, 1090 AD
- 論高麗買書利害箚子, 1093 AD
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