formalised into what was later known as the ‘tributary system’. That in
its fully elaborated form was the outcome of centuries of development
from the Han to the Ming dynasties.
Trade was an important source of wealth for the Yue peoples of
coastal China south of the Yangze River. That wealth, and access to
luxury products from Southeast Asia, seems to have motivated the first
Qin emperor to send his victorious armies against the Yue kingdoms.
Chinese domination was brief, however, and in the chaos that fol-
lowed the overthrow of the Qin dynasty, many of the Yue peoples
regained their independence. It was left to the emperor, Han Wudi, in
the early first century BCE, finally to extend Chinese power to the
southern coastal province of Guangdong, and to the Red River delta
of northern Vietnam.
In the meantime Chinese migration into the Yue coastal
regions had increased, as families fled unrest or persecution, or sought
new opportunities. These migrants brought with them Chinese culture
and the Chinese system of writing. Though extensive borrowing
occurred, northern Chinese (Mandarin) never succeeded in replacing
the Yue languages, which continue to this day in the form of Chinese
‘dialects’ (including Wu, Min, and Cantonese). The Yue languages of
coastal China became monosyllabic and tonal, like Mandarin
Chinese. In this form they could easily be written using Chinese char-
acters. The capacity of the non-alphabetic Chinese writing system to
provide the crucial adhesive that held China together as a unitary,
centrally administered kingdom can hardly be overestimated. It pro-
vided access for the coastal peoples to Chinese classical literature and
the worldview it took for granted, and led them to identify themselves
eventually as Chinese. This process of sinicisation was long and drawn
out, seeping down over the centuries from the literate elite to shape
the thinking of the mass of the population. Only the Vietnamese in
the end were able to resist this process and retain their separate iden-
tity as the Lac people, or southern Yue (the character for which is
pronounced Viet in Vietnamese).
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia