of Pagan. Srivijaya still controlled the Malay peninsula and Sumatra,
though its power declined after its capital was sacked in 1025 by the
Tamil Cholas of south India. Java was evolving from a land-based
polity into a kingdom with significant maritime interests that posed an
increasing challenge to the declining power of Srivijaya. All of these,
but for the more remote Mon kingdoms and with the addition of small
principalities in the Philippines and Borneo, continued to send tribu-
tary missions to Song China during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Song China developed an efficient and extensive bureaucracy,
recruited by examination based on the new orthodoxy of neo-
Confucianism, to administer its expanding economy. While overland
trade remained important (exchanging Chinese tea and silk for horses
and jade), maritime commerce developed rapidly. Larger ships were
able to carry bulk goods, particularly ceramics, along with tea, silks,
fine handicrafts and copper cash in return for pearls, pepper and other
spices, sugar, and aromatics such as benzoin and camphor. New ports
opened up on the Yangze River and the Fujian coast where communi-
ties of foreign, mainly Muslim merchants congregated. All trade was
still bureaucratically regulated, but Chinese merchants were freer to
conduct their commerce and accumulate wealth than they had previ-
ously been.
The Song further elaborated the tributary system, especially its
ceremonial aspects, as the weakened dynasty tried desperately to pre-
serve the supremacy of the Son of Heaven. A precise ceremonial was
developed for the reception of northern barbarian envoys, some of
whom represented kingdoms as powerful as the Song itself. Chinese
superiority could only be demonstrated by insisting on strict rules of
conduct for foreign embassies (including the size of missions, and what
trade could be conducted), combined with grandiose ceremonial
receptions designed to impress. These formalities were then applied to
all envoys, including those from Southeast Asia.
The weakness of the northern Song permitted only rhetorical
assertion of Chinese superiority, through insistence that any country
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia