A Short History of China and Southeast Asiamore powerful Southeast Asian kingdoms must have been aware of
this, but rejected all inducements to pay homage in person. Moreover,
apart from Vietnam, the kingdoms even of mainland Southeast Asia
did not place China alone at the apex of the international hierarchy.
In the seventeenth century, for example, Siam accorded similar recog-
nition to ambassadors from Mughal India and Persia as they did to
envoys from China.^16 India was always an alternative pole of attraction
(and status) for Buddhist kingdoms, for the same reason that Mecca
was for Muslim polities. Thus for all their acceptance of the Chinese
world order, Southeast Asian kingdoms never saw themselves as com-
mitted to that order alone. Their foreign relations cultures, while
hierarchical, recognised several potentially competing centres of
power, and made allowance for shifting power relationships.
The Ming voyages confirmed that China was indeed the regional
hegemon, with a capacity to project its naval power well beyond its
maritime frontiers. But the voyages themselves were more about
affirming the status of an ambitious emperor and reinforcing the
Chinese world order than about imposing political or military domi-
nation. When Ming armies did invade Vietnam, they were driven
back, and the tributary relationship was re-established. Security rested,
as always, on determined defence plus acceptance of the moral obliga-
tions implicit in the Chinese world order, for both vassal and
hegemon.