A Short History of China and Southeast Asia

officials, with the variable support of a Sino–Vietnamese landed elite,
administered a territory stretching south to the shifting frontier with
Champa, a distance over which Chinese cultural influence and admin-
istrative control gradually diminished. A Sino–Vietnamese elite might
hold power, but the peasants they ruled were Vietnamese, and the
province developed a tradition of strong local rule. In the words of
Keith Taylor:

Giao [Jiao-zhi] possessed a political momentum of its own,

independent of the empire. In fact, it was when the

empire was in the deepest trouble that the south pros-

pered most. Whenever the imperial court was strong

enough to dominate the region...rebellion and political

instability ensued. When the court was weak, local forces

arose, and stability followed.^7

These ‘local forces’ would eventually become sufficiently strong to gain
Vietnam its independence. In the meantime, however, Jiao-zhi,
despite its predominantly non-Chinese population, remained within
the empire. The cultural frontier was fixed along with the political
frontier between the Vietnamese and the Cham; or in Chinese termi-
nology, between inner and outer barbarians. While the Vietnamese
were forced to live under imperial domination and were expected to
adopt Chinese culture, the Cham sent tribute missions as an in-
dependent polity and were under no such pressure.
For a brief period in the 540s, the rebellion of Ly Bi established
Vietnamese independence. Ly was of Chinese descent, but his princi-
pal support came from native Vietnamese. The rebellion was
suppressed by imperial forces, but for the rest of the sixth century,
until China was reunified in 589, Jiao-zhi retained a high degree of
autonomy under the rule of powerful Sino–Vietnamese families owing
only nominal allegiance to their Chinese overlords. Buddhism
became well established, and the economy flourished as Long-bien

A Short History of China and Southeast Asia