frontiers. (Subsequently the title conferred on the Vietnamese ruler
was King of An-nam, though for his own people he was always
emperor of Dai Viet.)
To reiterate: for the Chinese the ruler of Vietnam was a king, like
any other ruler of kingdoms that presented tribute to the Son of
Heaven. For the Vietnamese, in their dealings with China, this was
accepted. The emperor of Vietnam designated himself ‘king’ in his
official correspondence with the Chinese court. But because the Viet-
namese shared the Chinese worldview, the ruler of Vietnam laid claim
to the same cosmic relationship with Heaven and Earth as did the Son
of Heaven, and the same relationship of hierarchical superiority to sur-
rounding, less cultured peoples. In his official dealings with the Khmer
and Cham and Lao, therefore, the Vietnamese ruler designated himself
as emperor.^9 Only by such a device could Vietnam establish an accept-
able bilateral relations regime with China, while at the same time
expressing its own international relations culture in its dealings with
its Southeast Asian neighbours.
The attitudes towards its neighbours that Vietnam adopted as
part of its culture of international relations carried with them implica-
tions for the extension of Vietnamese power that, not surprisingly,
were remarkably similar to Chinese views. Strategically, moreover,
Vietnamese expansion to the south (the Truong Son mountains effec-
tively hemmed in the Vietnamese to the west) was undertaken—as
was China’s southwards expansion—with an eye always on its vulner-
able northern frontier. What the steppe peoples were to China in
security terms, China was to Vietnam.
Throughout the Song period, Chinese attention was focused
onitsnorthern frontier where the steppe peoples posed a constant
threat. This preoccupation, and the Song policy of avoiding unneces-
sary armed conflict, enabled the Vietnamese to consolidate their
independence. They did so by following a dual strategy in their rela-
tions with China, combining military strength with status recognition
of Chinese superiority. It was a pattern consistently applied over the
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia