Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History

By Feng Zhang

Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History joins a rapidly growing body of important literature that combines history and International Relations theory to create new perspectives on East Asian political and strategic behavior. The book explores the strategic and institutional dynamics of international relations in East Asian history when imperial China was the undisputed regional hegemon, focusing in depth on two central aspects of Chinese hegemony at the time: the grand strategies China and its neighbors adopted in their strategic interactions, and the international institutions they engaged in to maintain regional order—including but not limited to the tribute system.

Feng Zhang draws on both Chinese and Western intellectual traditions to develop a relational theory of grand strategy and fundamental institutions in regional relations. The theory is evaluated with three case studies of Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, and Sino-Mongol relations during China's early Ming dynasty—when a type of Confucian expressive strategy was an essential feature of regional relations. He then explores the policy implications of this relational model for understanding and analyzing contemporary China's rise and the changing East Asian order. The book suggests some historical lessons for understanding contemporary Chinese foreign policy and considers the possibility of a more relational and cooperative Chinese strategy in the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Jun 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9780804795043

Feng Zhang

Feng Zhang got his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB), US, in September of 2018. From Nov. 2018 to Mar. 2019, he worked as a short term Postdoctoral researcher in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with Dr. Deborah Chung. In May of 2019, he joined Nanjing Normal University, and is a member of Jiangsu Key Laboratory of 3D Printing Equipment and Manufacturing. He obtained his Bachelor degree from Wuhan University of technology in 2005. After several years’ experience in industry, He attended UB and obtained his master degree in 2014. His current research interests include developing novel 3D printing methods for fabrication of various porous objects. Beginning February of 2019, Dr. Zhang’s Ph.D. topic is supported by the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award – CAREER. Dr. Zhang has served as the reviewer for many technique journals, including Rapid Prototyping, Additive Manufacturing, Journal of manufacturing process, Journal of manufacturing science and engineering. His work has been published in many high impact journal such as Nano Energy, Small, ACS Nano, and Nanotechnology.

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zhang, Feng, 1980– author.

Chinese hegemony : grand strategy and international institutions in East Asian history / Feng Zhang.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-9389-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. China—Foreign relations—East Asia.   2. East Asia—Foreign relations—China.   3. China—History—Ming dynasty, 1368–1644.   4. Hegemony—China—History.   5. Hegemony—East Asia—History.   I. Title.

DS740.61.Z53 2015

327.5105—dc23

2014041549

ISBN 978-0-8047-9504-3 (electronic)

Typeset by Newgen in 11/14 Garamond

Chinese Hegemony

GRAND STRATEGY AND INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN EAST ASIAN HISTORY

Feng Zhang

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

To my wife Shu Man, for all your love and sacrifice, and to our daughter,

Zhang Han, for the faith we have in you

Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Transliterations

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

1. Introduction

2. A Relational Theory of Grand Strategy

3. Sino-Korean Relations

4. Sino-Japanese Relations

5. Sino-Mongol Relations

6. Fundamental Institutions of Chinese Hegemony

7. The Value of Relationalism

Appendix I. Major Periods in Ancient and Imperial China

Appendix II. Translation of Key Chinese Terms and Expressions

Notes

References

Index

Illustrations

FIGURES

1.1. Comparing concentrations of material capability

6.1. A relational framework of the constitutional structure of international society

TABLES

1.1. Population and gross domestic product of China, East Asia, and the world around 1500

2.1. Logics of action in Confucian relationalism

2.2. Relational international structure in traditional East Asia

2.3. Relational grand strategies

3.1. Evolution of Chinese strategies toward Korea

3.2. Evolution of Korean strategies toward China

4.1. Evolution of Chinese strategies toward Japan

4.2. Evolution of Japanese strategies toward China

5.1. Evolution of Chinese strategies toward the Mongols

5.2. Evolution of Mongol strategies toward China

6.1. Institutional structure of the international society of Chinese hegemony

7.1. Duration of strategies during the early Ming period

MAP

3.1. Northeast and Inner Asia during the early Ming period

Notes on Transliterations

Chinese names and terms are transliterated with standard Pinyin romanization except when they are taken from a Western-language source that uses the Wade-Giles system or the Cantonese system. Japanese names and terms are transliterated with the Hepburn system, and Korean with the McCune-Reischauer system. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names are written with the family name preceding the given name, except when they are taken from a Western-language source that provides the author’s given name before the family name.

Conversion of Chinese dates into their Western equivalents is based on the excellent online converting system developed by Academia Sinica (http://sinocal.sinica.edu.tw).

Citation of multichapter (juan) Chinese sources such as the Ming shi lu and Ming shi that are available in modern editions generally follows the customary practice among historians of placing a period between the juan number and the page range. The page range referred to is that of the pagination of the modern edition (e.g., MSL, Taizong shi lu, 247.2313–14; MS, 328.8497).

Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Chinese terms and sources are my own.

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been completed without the help and support of many individuals and institutions. My greatest intellectual debt is to my teachers and friends in the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Chris R. Hughes helped me to sharpen my thinking on important questions that the project needed to tackle. Barry Buzan and Karen Smith helped me plan this book in its early stages. Barry, moreover, read the next-to-last draft with great care and provided many insightful comments and criticisms. I was also fortunate to have colleagues to aid me along the process, including Toh Ee Loong, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Jeffrey Reeves, and many others. I am also grateful to LSE’s Government Department, particularly Lin Chun and Dominic Lieven. The Vincent Cheng scholarship of the LSE provided crucial financial support for the project. The International Relations departments of Tsinghua University, Murdoch University, and the Australian National University have also provided helpful institutional environments for revising and completing this book in different ways.

During the long gestation of the book, I have received encouragement, support, comments, and much-needed criticisms from many scholars. They include Daniel Bell, Timothy Brook, William Callahan, Chen Jian, Ja Ian Chong, Michael Cox, Pamela Crossley, Nicola Di Cosmo, Tim Dunne, Mark Elliott, Paul Evans, Rosemary Foot, Ian Hall, Victoria Tin-bor Hui, David Kang, Peter Katzenstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Jason Sharman, Jack Snyder, Song Chengyou, Masayuki Tadokoro, William Tow, Tsai Mon-Han, Geoff Wade, Wang Gungwu, Yuan-kang Wang, Arne Westad, John E. Wills Jr., William Wohlforth, Brantly Womack, Yan Xuetong, Yu Wanli, Yuen Foong Khong, Zhang Qian, Zhang Yongjin, Zhao Tingyang, and Zheng Yongnian.

I am especially grateful to Victoria Hui for her invaluable advice almost from the start of this project. Wang Gungwu’s interest in my work has been a particular encouragement to me. Barry Buzan, David Kang, Peter Katzenstein, Richard Ned Lebow, William Tow, Tsai Mon-Han, and Yuan-kang Wang have all read part or whole of the manuscript and provided insightful comments and suggestions. Dave Kang and Ned Lebow read multiple drafts and provided extensive feedback. Ned Lebow, moreover, has been extremely helpful in the final submission stage. I am also grateful to Geoffrey Burn at Stanford University Press for taking this project on board, to James Holt, Anne Fuzellier, and Jay Harward for editorial and production assistance, and to Katherine Faydash for expert copyediting. I also thank my colleague Mary-Louise Hickey in the International Relations Department of the Australian National University for her very careful proofreading.

I owe my family the deepest debt for their unwavering support over many years. My wife, Shu Man, with her love and dedication, is the most important person behind the initiation and completion of this book. Our recently arrived daughter, Zhang Han, has given us joy and faith. Finally, I am grateful to my parents, Zhang Zhihao and Fan Lianyun, for understanding and supporting me over such a long and sometimes difficult period.

Abbreviations

ONE

Introduction

China’s rise is one of the most significant developments in contemporary international relations. As the result of more than three decades of phenomenal economic growth, since the initiation of economic reform in 1978, a strong China now stands before the world for the first time in over a century. As China may rival the United States in material capabilities,¹ recent discussions on China’s role in world politics have been gradually shifting from a focus on the material characteristics of China’s rise to a growing concern with the impact of Chinese power on regional and international order. The central question is no longer Can China rise? or How great will its capabilities be? but What will China do with its new power? and What will China want?² As Paul Evans puts it, The great strategic issue of our times is not just China’s rising power but whether its worldview and applied theory will reproduce, converge with, or take a separate path from the world order and ideas produced in the era of trans-Atlantic dominance.³

Indeed, such an analytical shift is apparent in an emerging academic and policy discourse, inside and outside China, on possible Chinese hegemony in East Asia. Inside China, an important group of scholars, albeit still a minority in the Chinese intellectual community, has begun to promote China’s world leadership on the basis of a distinctive type of Chinese hegemony, humane authority.⁴ Outside China, discussions of Chinese hegemony either reflect a general concern with the ramifications of greater Chinese power or derive from a traditional, realist preoccupation with hegemonic competition in international politics. Thus, the writer Martin Jacques asks, What will a globally hegemonic China look like?⁵ And Aaron Friedberg, a realist scholar worried about China’s challenge to US hegemony, avers that Beijing may not seek conquest or direct physical control over its surroundings, but despite repeated claims to the contrary, it does seek a form of regional hegemony.⁶ These discussions are taking place despite the Chinese government’s persistent renunciation of any hegemonic ambition throughout the reform era (1978 to the present).

But how can we think about a future Chinese hegemony if it is possible? Pure theoretical deductions will not offer great help, because most theories in the social sciences, including international relations (IR) theories, are poor at useful predictions of any sort.⁷ And when general predictions are possible, such as the offensive realist one that a strong China will be bent on regional hegemony,⁸ they are too general to illuminate the characteristics of a putative Chinese hegemony. As John Ruggie has observed, All hegemonies are not alike.⁹ Nor will policy speculations about possible Chinese strategies based on recent trends help us understand future strategies, since current trends are not necessarily reliable guides for the future. Nor will historical analogies offer great insights. Many Chinese analysts frequently assert that a strong China will be as peaceful and benign as its imperial predecessor supposedly was. Many Western observers take for granted the disruption of the rise to power and the hegemonic struggle—in this case, China as the rising power in competition with the United States as the existing hegemon. Yet such analogies are extremely facile on close scrutiny, and the historicist notion of invariant historical laws has long been discredited.¹⁰

Although we cannot claim to know too much about the consequences of a possible future Chinese hegemony, scholarly research can achieve a modest aim of providing theoretical clues and establishing historical foundations from which to view those clues. This book explores the strategic and institutional dynamics of international relations in East Asian history when imperial China was the undisputed regional hegemon. The theoretical and historical orientation serves three purposes. First, it examines China’s historical hegemony in the East Asian region as a distinct mode of international hegemony in world history. Second, it provides the essential historical background for us to consider China’s new, and possibly hegemonic, role in contemporary East Asia. Third, it offers an important historical East Asian case to qualify, challenge, and revise some existing IR theories and perspectives that have developed out of the modern Western experience.¹¹ Although this study is motivated by a current policy concern, it is not a contemporary policy analysis. Its aim is to provide a new explanation of traditional East Asian international relations under the condition of Chinese hegemony and to make a theoretical argument about the value of a relational approach for IR research.

Contemporary policy implications follow from theory and history, but they are not derived from theoretical deduction or historical analogy. Instead, employing ethical relationalism as a critical and normative IR theory for evaluating contemporary Chinese foreign policy grounds those implications in a rich historical background. I understand the policy significance of history to be an indispensable background for making sense of contemporary developments. Theory, in contrast, is an essential instrument for gaining deep understanding of enduring problems, which can shed light on contemporary issues. Of course, China may not become a hegemon, given the inherent limits and constraints of its power, and the question of a future Chinese hegemony would thus be a moot one. Even so, the value of this study as a historical and theoretical inquiry into international relations in East Asian history will stand. An exploration of the dynamics of historical Chinese hegemony and the intellectual challenges it poses to existing Eurocentric IR theory will in itself make a contribution to IR as a global field of study.

Specifically, the book examines two major dimensions of international relations in East Asian history: the grand strategies of imperial China and its neighbors in their strategic interactions and the fundamental institutional practices of regional politics. Addressing the strategic patterns and institutional maintenance of hegemony, these are central questions for understanding any hegemonic order. What were the grand strategic choices that imperial China and its neighbors adopted toward one another under the condition of Chinese hegemony? What were the fundamental institutional practices that sustained their interactions as part of an international society of Chinese hegemony? And how can we explain these strategic and institutional choices? I develop and evaluate a relational theory of grand strategy and institutional formation to answer these questions.

For policy implications, my question is not what the grand strategies and international institutions in East Asian history might suggest for strategic and institutional developments of a new East Asian order with a reemerging China. Such a question can certainly be asked, and it is indeed a customary one, but it risks historicism. Instead, I ask how the theoretical approach taken in this book and the historical foundation laid by it help us critique contemporary Chinese strategy and evaluate the future possibilities of that strategy. Policy issues are engaged by outlining ethical relationalism—a critical and normative theory with empirical foundations—to assess the strategic impact of China’s rise. The book is thus simultaneously empirical, critical, and normative. This is a fully defensible and even desirable position since, as Christian Reus-Smit has argued, the IR mainstream needs to reclaim ethics as a central field of inquiry alongside the currently dominant explanatory mode.¹² Indeed, prominent recent works are already moving in this direction.¹³

Still, one may ask, what is the value of this historically and theoretically oriented work for someone interested only in contemporary policy? Anyone attempting to understand China’s new role in East Asia will, however, need an appreciation of its historical role in the region and some guidance of theory for interpreting its past and present roles. Anyone trying to identify the strategic possibilities of contemporary Chinese foreign policy may want to understand such possibilities in China’s long history. Anyone hoping for a more peaceful and cooperative China as a great power may want to assess the potential of a more ethical Chinese strategy in the future. And anyone seeking to understand regional responses to rising Chinese power today may want to know about regional responses to Chinese hegemony in the past.

This book offers a detailed historical explanation of the strategic and institutional dimensions of the region’s hegemonic experience and China’s role in that experience. It explains Chinese grand strategies in the past and considers the possibility of a normatively desirable relational strategy in the present. It explains the essential role of Confucian ethics in imperial Chinese foreign policy and discusses the potential of ethical relationalism in contemporary Chinese foreign policy. It clarifies the multifaceted nature of past regional responses to Chinese hegemony and suggests the need to go beyond simplistic categories for understanding contemporary responses. Moreover, the critical theory of ethical relationalism sketched in the final chapter identifies the ways in which Chinese foreign policy, and the foreign policies of other countries, might be made more ethical, relational, and cooperative. The theory proposes reestablishing the Confucian value of humaneness as the central moral purpose of international relations and suggests why this is possible.

The Argument

I make an interrelated set of arguments about the grand strategic interactions and fundamental institutional practices of historical East Asian politics under the condition of Chinese hegemony. First, however, I develop a concept of relationality in international relations and construct a relational theory for explanation. By relationality I mean the dynamic processes of connections and transactions among actors in structured social relationships, as opposed to their substances and attributes.¹⁴ Relationalism is the theoretical perspective that we need to understand international relations—and indeed any social behavior—in terms of the relational processes of interactions among actors in a network of social relationships. It is a structural approach in taking mutual relations, not actor attributes, as the primary unit of analysis.

A relational perspective requires looking beyond actor attributes to their patterned relationships in social explanation. For example, one may explain a state’s grand strategy by theorizing how its relative capability or ideology may suggest certain strategic propensities. Such an explanation ignores how the relationships the state forms with other actors may affect strategic choices during their interactions independent of the attributes of capability or ideology. A relational explanation, however, would focus on the structural effects of patterned relationships on actor strategy. This book shows how the relational structure of historical East Asia and the changing interaction dynamics among China and its neighbors affected the strategic choices of all actors. Chapter 2 develops a three-part conception of the relational international structure in the traditional East Asian context and theorizes its implications for grand strategy. Chapter 7 constructs a relational framework of the constitutional structure of the international society of Chinese hegemony and discusses its fundamental institutions. Relationalism is, of course, not new in IR research.¹⁵ The theoretical synthesis of Chinese and Western relationalisms and empirical application to historical East Asia, however, produce a novel approach for studying a historically significant and currently policy-relevant topic in a vastly understudied area of international relations in world history.

My first substantive argument deals with hierarchy in regional politics. I differentiate between hierarchy as a relational structure of international authority and hierarchy as a Chinese international strategy. According to David Lake, A political relationship is anarchic if the units—in this case, states—possess no authority over one another. It is hierarchic when one unit, the dominant state, possesses authority over a second, subordinate state.¹⁶ This is the view of hierarchy as an international relationship of legitimate authority.¹⁷ But hierarchy may also become a state strategy to create such a relational structure in foreign relations. Indeed, imperial China adopted two distinct strategies of hierarchy depending on the relational interaction dynamics. David Kang is the pioneering scholar in advancing the East Asian hierarchy argument.¹⁸ He does not, however, distinguish these two conceptions of hierarchy or establish degrees of relational hierarchy in regional politics. His analysis is insightful but sometimes too general. My argument builds on Kang’s work, but it is theoretically more specific on the hierarchy concept and empirically grounded in in-depth historical case studies. I show that the East Asian order during China’s early Ming dynasty (1368–1424), the methodological choice of which is justified in the next section, was not a complete hierarchy of Chinese authority over its neighbors. Its degree varied with different foreign relationships.

This argument is crucial for establishing the degree of Chinese hegemony in regional politics. I define hegemony as the conjunction of material primacy and social legitimacy. Hegemony, as Ian Clark emphasizes, should not be conflated with primacy. It entails the additional implication of primacy underpinned by social legitimacy rather than the condition of material preponderance alone.¹⁹ Michael Mastanduno explains that hegemony requires a preponderance of material resources, a sense of social purpose, the ability to control international outcomes of importance to the dominant state, and some degree of consent and acceptance from other states in the system.²⁰ Thus, although hegemony usually requires material primacy, a system of primacy is not necessarily one of hegemony. Hegemony entails a social recognition by other states that the leading state’s material dominance and its consequent international rules and behaviors are broadly legitimate.

This understanding of hegemony as based on international legitimacy runs parallel to the understanding of relational hierarchy as a relationship of legitimate authority. International hegemony and hierarchy are thus intrinsically cognate concepts: hegemony entails a high degree of hierarchical authority, and such authority, possessed by one state over other states, implies a hegemonic structure in their relationships. Because China’s hierarchical authority over its neighbors was incomplete, its regional hegemony was consequently also incomplete.

Hierarchy could also be seen as the preeminent grand strategy of early Ming China, and it was executed in two very distinct ways. Most of the time, early Ming emperors adopted a strategy of instrumental hierarchy for the maximization of self-interest by exploiting hierarchical relationships with foreign rulers. Less frequently, but still significantly, they practiced a strategy of expressive hierarchy in accordance with Confucian propriety by establishing ethically endowed relationships for the sake of having such relationships. This conception of imperial Chinese grand strategy is considerably broader than those of Alastair Iain Johnston and Yuan-kang Wang, which focus narrowly on military power and security.²¹

Second, I argue that expressive rationality embodying Confucian relational affection and obligation, as opposed to instrumental rationality of consequentialist means-end calculation, was an essential feature of regional relations in Ming China. Expressive rationality was the Confucian paradigm of psychologically natural and ethically appropriate social action. The empirical analysis shows that this paradigm accounted for more than one-fifth of total regional strategic outcomes, measured by the number of years in which the various strategies were adopted during the early Ming period. Although not as prominent as instrumental rationality overall, expressive rationality was clearly a constituent—and at times significant—feature of regional politics.

This finding challenges the Eurocentric IR literature, which has hardly any conception of expressive rationality at all. It also qualifies the traditional Chinese view of Confucian pacifism and the recent realist approach of reducing Confucianism to a residual variable in accounting for strategic formation.²² Confucian pacifism implies China’s hegemonic benevolence, but it is clearly mistaken, because Confucian expressive strategies did not dominate regional relations. The realist approach is also inadequate because in cases of expressive strategies, Confucianism was the major, not residual, variable. My overall argument is that regional relations reflected both expressive and instrumental strategies. The adoption of these strategies was conditioned by the degree of the conflict of interest in particular relationships. Expressive strategies were more likely to be adopted under the condition of relational amity. Existing approaches tend to take the causal role of Confucianism either too seriously or too lightly. This argument shifts the analytical focus to the question of the conditions of different strategies and away from the absolute dominance of one strategy or another.

My third argument challenges the venerable paradigm of the tribute system in the traditional historical as well as the more recent IR literatures. According to its most significant exponent, the eminent historian John K. Fairbank, imperial China created a Chinese world order sustained by the tribute system as a total system for all of China’s international relations.²³ But in fact, Fairbank described the tribute system mainly as a mechanism for diplomacy and trade symbolized by foreign rulers’ presentation of native products as tribute to the Chinese court. It is hard to believe that such a mechanism could have constituted the totality of the international relations of China or East Asia. Nevertheless, drawing on this paradigm, some IR scholars, notably David Kang and Zhang Yongjin and Barry Buzan, conceptualize the tribute system as a social structure or international society in East Asian history.²⁴ Others find in the tribute system a historical precedent of a benevolent Chinese hegemony.²⁵ They assert that it still provides a model for China’s present and future relations in Asia, particularly the ability to develop and maintain enduring, mutually beneficial relations with weaker states, without provoking a backlash or attempts at counterbalancing.²⁶

The tribute system may be usefully conceived of as a significant international society with shared norms, rules, and institutions.²⁷ But, like the organized hypocrisy of Westphalian sovereignty,²⁸ it was an incomplete system that was constantly revised, challenged, or avoided by different actors. It was far from the totality of China’s foreign relations, not to mention regional relations as a whole. It therefore becomes important to delimit the boundary of the tribute system in a given historical period and distinguish it from greater East Asian international society. In identifying it as an international society, however, a central analytical task is to explain the structural or institutional effects of the tribute system on actor behavior. Existing approaches of Kang and Zhang and Buzan fall short because they focus too much on the structural characteristics of the tribute system, to the neglect of the agential processes that created and shaped that structure in the first place. I suggest that my relational theory of grand strategy and fundamental institutions supported by the case studies implicitly supplies an agential account. The agency in regional relations—the causal processes of institutional origination, change, and effects—are analyzed in terms of the evolution of the grand strategic interactions between early Ming China and its neighbors. It was through these strategies that fundamental institutions exerted their varying constraints on actor behavior.

Did the tribute system embody Chinese benevolence? If we see the tribute system as an international society, tributary diplomacy—the process whereby Chinese and foreign rulers established and sustained a hierarchical relationship—would then become its fundamental institution. I argue that the institution of tributary diplomacy was reflected in four strategies that China and other actors adopted toward one another: expressive hierarchy for Confucian propriety and instrumental hierarchy for self-interest maximization in the case of China, and identification with Chinese values and deference to Chinese power in the case of other actors. While expressive hierarchy and identification were expressive strategies, instrumental hierarchy and deference were instrumental ones. Thus, the tribute system actually embodied both Chinese humaneness and instrumentality. This is a sufficient challenge to the assumption of Chinese benevolence in the tribute system, but it does not constitute a theoretical advance if the claim is only that both logics applied to the tribute system. I contend, in addition, that the degree of relational tension was a facilitating condition for the adoption of instrumental or expressive strategies. The tribute system, including both its strategic and its institutional dimensions, can also be explained relationally.

Finally, this book makes a much-needed argument about the strategic responses of China’s neighbors to Chinese hegemony in the region. As the eminent historian Wang Gungwu suggests, we need to note the experiences of China’s neighbors during those previous times when China was wealthy and prosperous, in order to develop a long-term and balanced historical perspective on contemporary China’s rise.²⁹ Although an established paradigm on regional responses does not seem to exist in the current literature, there are several suggestive views that can serve as a starting point for discussion. An outdated part of the traditional historical literature sometimes portrayed other polities’ relations with China as servile submission. The paradigm of the tribute system identifies trade as the most important motive of these polities’ tribute to China.³⁰ Occasionally the polities are described as China’s satellites, in a sort of Chinese sphere of influence.³¹ A recent realist interpretation characterizes their strategy as bandwagoning with China for security.³²

I argue that China’s neighbors adopted an impressive variety of strategies, including, from the most to the least cooperative, identification with Chinese values, deference to Chinese power, access to China’s resource network, and exit from that network. The strategy of deference in order to maximize self-interest by exploiting Chinese resources was the most prominent. To understand the multiplicity of regional responses, this argument goes beyond the somewhat sterile realist debate on balancing versus bandwagoning in secondary states’ response to greater power.³³

The finding also offers a new perspective on other polities’ tribute to China. Tribute never constituted the totality of China’s international relations. But even the practice of tribute itself was not uniform or monolithic.³⁴ The strategies of identification, deference, and access embodied three very different rationales for tribute. Historians have proposed typologies of tributary relationships by differentiating typical, general, and nominal tributary relationships to indicate the different nature of tribute.³⁵ Although this line of research focuses on the different forms of tribute, my explanation of the different strategies of China’s neighbors clarifies the varied strategic motivations behind each form.

Yet