interests to maintain good relations with China. For Dai Viet, the
Southern Song still represented the threatening proximity of Chinese
power; for Champa, China was a powerful arbitrator to whom to
appeal in the face of Vietnamese or Cambodian aggression; while for
Srivijaya, Chinese markets were essential for the entrepôt trade that
was its lifeblood.
Conclusion
The Hindu–Buddhist worldviews of Southeast Asian polities that
evolved during the first millennium CE were very different from
that of Confucian China. Both, however, included elements that
were sufficiently compatible to form the basis for functional bilateral
relations regimes that tacitly accepted the Chinese world order.
Contact increased, especially during the Tang dynasty, through more
open trade and a common interest in Buddhism. But Buddhism in
China was never able to modify the Chinese world order centred on
the worship of Heaven and the cult of the emperor, which continued
to shape China’s culture of international relations.
Chinese power did not weigh heavily on Southeast Asia during
this time. The kingdom of Nanzhao in Yunnan remained an inde-
pendent buffer, and Vietnam broke free of the empire after the collapse
of the Tang dynasty. China posed only a minimal strategic threat,
therefore, to Southeast Asia, except for Vietnam, whose independence
rested on acceptance of a tributary relationship that conformed more
closely to Chinese demands than did the bilateral relations regimes
other Southeast Asian kingdoms worked out with China.
Trade continued to be central to China–Southeast Asia relations.
During the Tang, much of the trade between China and Southeast Asia
was still in the hands of non-Chinese (including Southeast Asian) mer-
chants and shipping, but by the time of the Song a significant shift was
underway. Chinese ship building came of age and more of the Nanyang
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia