By the beginning of the first century BCE, conditions existed for
an expansion of Chinese contacts with Southeast Asia. Yet this was
slow to happen. Yue vessels do not seem to have ventured far beyond
their coastal waters. The few bold Chinese merchants, adventurers,
and eventually envoys, who sailed to Southeast Asia did so on ships
probably crewed by more accomplished Austronesian-speaking sailors
whom we can broadly designate as ‘Malay’. There are several reasons
why the Chinese failed to exploit trading possibilities with Southeast
Asia at this time. For one thing, after Han Wudi’s reign no official
encouragement was given to overseas trade, though if we are to believe
the historian Ban Gu writing almost two centuries later, tributary
(essentially trade) missions were received from as far away as south
India. Also, the products of Southeast Asia were relatively little
known. The luxury items most prized by the Chinese came from India
and further west, overland along the fabled Silk Road. Sea trade was
dangerous, and as foreign vessels continued to make port in northern
Vietnam and southern China, bringing pearls, coral, tortoise shell, pre-
cious stones and bird’s feathers to exchange for silks and gold, there
was little need for Chinese merchants to sail their own ships into the
Southern Ocean.
The few Chinese traders who voyaged by sea at this time would
first have come into contact with the Cham, a people speaking an
Austronesian language who had settled along the coast of central
Vietnam. Merchants who ventured further into the Gulf of Thailand
would then have encountered proto-Khmer and Mon speakers of
Austroasiatic languages who had established riverine or coastal settle-
ments. Further to the south Malay peoples were already present along
the coasts of peninsula Malaya, and had populated much of maritime
Southeast Asia. All were poised to construct their own small and
localised kingdoms, and eager to borrow any ideas that would help.
The failure of the Chinese to take to the sea left the way open for
Indian influence to dominate state formation in Southeast Asia.
Early relations