Chapter 6
Fundamental Institutions of Chinese Hegemony
The case studies of Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, and Sino-Mongol relations during the early Ming period
examined the processes of grand strategic interactions in these relationships. They evaluated my relational
theory and demonstrated its explanatory power and insights for understanding strategic patterns in regional
relations. Did these strategic processes also reveal the fundamental institutional practices that sustained regional
order? This chapter, in deducing the institutional implications of the theoretical and empirical analyses of the
preceding four chapters, will answer that question.
The existing literature provides a ready answer to the institutional question. The famous tribute system
paradigm, invented by historians a long time ago and adapted by IR scholars in more recent research, asserts
the tribute system to be the fundamental institution of regional order. Yet this paradigm has come under
mounting attack in historical scholarship since the 1980s. Arthur Waldron has gone so far as to declare it “a
discredited theory” and an “utterly false” interpretation.1 In IR, existing institutional approaches have not
demonstrated the causal processes whereby the tribute system exercised its supposed institutional effects on
actor behavior. Their structural insights come at the expense of explaining the origin and change of the
institution of the tribute system at the agential level.
In this chapter, I make a twofold argument on the tribute system. On the one hand, one may usefully
conceptualize the tribute system as a distinct international society. Such a conception, however, demands a
theoretical and empirical demonstration of the causal processes whereby the social structure of the tribute
system applied its structural effects on actor behavior. The theory and case studies of this book, I suggest, have
implicitly provided such an analysis by explaining the causal processes in which the fundamental institution of
tributary diplomacy affected actor strategy and behavior. The agency in regional relations lay in part in the
grand strategic interactions between early Ming China and its neighbors. This analysis is a contribution to
existing institutional approaches because it complements their structuralism by adding the agential side of the
Ch.6 – 1
story. On the other hand, I argue that an exclusive focus on the tribute system is unlikely to capture the full
institutional dynamics of regional politics. Other fundamental institutions worked alongside tributary
diplomacy to sustain regional order. The practical importance of these institutions varied historically, but
tributary diplomacy was not always dominant. The tribute system paradigm thus contains inherent limits in
accounting for historical East Asian politics because tribute was far from the totality of regional relations.
This argument is embedded within a larger analysis of the institutional structure of the East Asian
international society of Chinese hegemony. Chapter 1 established Chinese material primacy in the region during
the early Ming period. The case studies assessed the degree of China’s hierarchic authority over regional actors,
suggesting that early Ming China possessed an incomplete hegemony in the region. This was at the same time a
distinct international society with its own rules, norms, and institutions. I develop a relational framework of the
constitutional structure of the society of Chinese hegemony by applying my relational approach and by drawing
on English School and constructivist theories of international institutions. The findings offer a more
sophisticated account of regional institutions and reveal their normative and strategic underpinnings. Although
tributary diplomacy was an extremely consequential institution, it was not always the most important one. The
chapter explains the institutional manifestations of tributary diplomacy while also observing other fundamental
institutional practices. The society of Chinese hegemony, as we shall see, was broader and more dynamic than
the tribute system.
Early Ming China’s Incomplete Hegemony
Chapter 1 provided some quantitative data to show that the East Asian order during the early Ming period was
one of Chinese primacy or unipolarity, understood in terms of the dominance of China’s material capability.
Did this Chinese primacy also mean Chinese hegemony? Hegemony entails the additional component of
international authority, as noted in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 suggested that China possesses no authority over other
actors when these actors adopt strategies of access and exit, some authority when they adopt a strategy of
deference, and great authority when they adopt a strategy of identification. If we use these criteria to measure
the degree of Chinese authority, it becomes clear that the East Asian order during the early Ming period,
Ch.6 – 2
judging from Korean, Japanese, and Mongol strategic responses to Chinese power, was an incomplete Chinese
hegemony. Identification stood out as the major strategic approach of the Chosŏn court of Korea, but did not
dominate the strategies of Japanese and Mongol rulers. But nor were access and exit on the whole, even though
at times they were salient in Japanese and Mongol strategies. The major strategy, adopted simultaneously by the
Koreans, the Japanese, and the Mongols, was deference for their varied self-interests by exploiting Chinese
resources, particularly in the cases of the Mongols and the Koreans. Indeed, deference was the only secondary
strategic response to Chinese power present in all of the three case studies examined in this book.
Thus early Ming China possessed a reasonable, though far from complete, degree of regional hegemony.
That it was incomplete is hardly surprising given the nature of political authority as a matter of degree. In fact,
every hegemony is incomplete, even in the case of the contemporary American hegemony.2 Hegemons confront
challenges not only from their rivals, but also sometimes from their closest supporters, even if they
fundamentally set the rules of the game. The extent of Chinese hegemony and the rules of the game China set
for East Asian politics were considerable when viewed against the conventional assumption of anarchy in
international relations.3 It was particularly impressive in the relationship between Ming China and Chosŏn
Korea. True, early Ming China encountered some resistance and challenge from its neighbors as reflected in
their strategy of exit, thus suggesting the anarchic dimension of regional politics too.4 But it never had to
confront a systemic anti-hegemonic response in the form of, say, a counterbalancing coalition characteristic of
modern European politics. Even the Mongols, with whom the Ming maintained the most unstable and
conflictual relationship in all of its foreign relations, had abandoned their ambition of overthrowing the Ming
regime by the end of the Hongwu reign. On the whole, then, Chinese primacy in early-Ming East Asia was also
a Chinese hegemony accepted by its neighbors to varying degrees.
Fundamental Institutions of Chinese Hegemony
What were the foundations of this Chinese hegemony understood as a broadly legitimate Chinese leadership in
the region? How was it maintained in practice? In asking these questions, we are entering the realm of English
School theories of international institutions as the fundamental source of international order. Hedley Bull
defined institution as “a set of habits and practices shaped towards the realisation of common goals,” as “an
Ch.6 – 3
expression of the element of collaboration among states in discharging their political functions—and at the
same time a means of sustaining this collaboration.”5 Expanding Bull’s classical argument, Barry Buzan views
primary institutions “as durable and recognised patterns of shared practices rooted in values held commonly by
the members of interstate societies, and embodying a mix of norms, rules and principles.”6
One of the most important attempts to explain institutional formation is Christian Reus-Smit’s theory of the
constitutional structure of international society. Starting from the English School perspective of seeing
institutions as agents for achieving and sustaining international order, Reus-Smit defines fundamental
institutions as “the elementary rules of practice that states formulate to solve the coordination and collaboration
problems associated with coexistence under anarchy.”7 Developing a historically informed constructivist theory
of fundamental institutional construction, Reus-Smit disassembles the constitutional structures of international
society into three normative components: “a hegemonic belief about the moral purpose of the state, an
organizing principle of sovereignty, and a systemic norm of procedural justice.”8
Although Reus-Smit’s case studies focus on European history, the theory may be applied to other historical
contexts such as the East Asian one, as Zhang Yongjin and Barry Buzan have done recently. 9 But such
application is not unproblematic. The key limitation is the fundamentally European experience of sovereign
statehood from which the theory draws its inspiration, reflected in such key terms as “state”, “sovereignty,” and
“justice” in its typology of constitutional structure. Reus-Smit himself seems to acknowledge its limitation in
cases of “suzerain or heteronomous forms of political organization.”10 Not to judge its applicability a priori, I
propose a different framework by drawing on it while applying my own relational perspective.
Yet theorizing fundamental institutions of Chinese hegemony may at first sight seem unnecessary, for Ian
Clark has recently stressed the utility of conceptualizing hegemony itself as an international institution.
Defining hegemony as “an institutionalized practice of special rights and responsibilities, conferred by
international society or a constituency within it, on a state (or states) with the resources to lead,” Clark theorizes
hegemony as a primary institution of international society with distinct institutional forms.11 Yet the definition
of hegemony adopted here—the conjunction of material primacy and international authority—requires seeing it
as first and foremost a social structure rather than an institution in itself. The institutionalized practices that the
social structure of hegemony enables need to be examined at a lower level of analysis and in their own light. In
other words, hegemony must have its own fundamental institutions distinct from the social structure of
Ch.6 – 4
legitimate authority itself. Accordingly, I conceptualize Chinese hegemony as a primary international society—
rather than an international institution—in the history of East Asian international relations.
The constitutional structure of Chinese hegemony
A relational perspective suggests three primary normative components parallel to those of Reus-Smit’s
framework: a hegemonic belief about the moral purpose of international relationships, a central principle of
relational rationality, and a systemic norm of procedural appropriateness (see Figure 6.1).
Two revisions based on my relational approach are important. First, in place of Reus-Smit’s somewhat statecentric conception of legitimate statehood and rightful state action is a relational view of the moral purpose of
international relationships; and in place of his concern with the organization of state sovereignty is an emphasis
on stable relationships as reflecting relational rationality in international relations. Imperial China in general
had only a weak conception of ethnicity and territoriality that are among the requisites of modern nationstates.12 A historical Chinese and East Asian conception of sovereignty would have differed substantially from
the modern European nation-state model. China organized its foreign relations not around a legally binding
principle of sovereign territoriality but around a vague ethical notion of its continuously radiating political and
cultural authority.13 The concept of sovereignty must be given a rigorous analytical specification if it were to be
applied to historical East Asia without losing considerable analytical insights.14
Second, the concept of “justice,” a term rooted in Western political theory, is replaced by one of
“appropriateness” (yi 義) more neutral and reflective of the East Asian experience.15 Although yi is related to
justice, it lacks the latter’s overtones of an absolute moral standard. In the Chinese view, yi is an outcome of
expressive rationality, and its context-dependent achievement is considered a higher principle than justice based
on some absolute standard.16
[Figure 6.1 about here]
China’s hegemonic belief about the moral purpose of international relationships can be summarized as the
promotion of a universal ethical world order based on Confucian propriety and underpinned by China’s
relational authority. This moral purpose derives from the central focus of Confucian politics on ethical
education.17 As Joseph Chan puts it, “If the Greek conception of political community is political or collective,
then the Chinese conception can be called ethical. In the Chinese conception, the importance of politics lies not
Ch.6 – 5
in collective participation in collective decisions, but in its promotion of the highest moral good in individual
lives (ren), and its accompanying moral order, a harmonious order of social relationships.”18
The normative universality of China’s world order was encapsulated by such terms as “wu wai” (無外 no
outer-separation)19 and “tian xia” (天下, literally “all under heaven”) repeatedly used by the early Ming
emperors. In practice, Chinese rulers usually recognized the limits of their power20 and harbored no intention to
rule the entire world. Even the boundaries of an ideologically constructed sinocentric world—the tianxia—
varied in different times and even in the mind of the same ruler.21 But the universalistic pretension was
nonetheless strong, and the stated intention was to create with all peoples of the known world a hierarchical
authority relationship in political and familial terms according to emperor-vassal and father-son role
differentiation (see Chapter 2). In practice, again, the degree of hierarchy could vary greatly from a very
substantial emperor-vassal relationship with close tributaries such as Korea to a nominal contact-only
relationship with remote peoples. Such ethically based relationships were believed to be able to cultivate the
moral excellence of all peoples while bringing security, peace, and order to the world, thus fulfilling the moral
purpose of Chinese authority in the world.
The structure of world order was always conceived of relationally in terms of the emperor’s distinct bilateral
relationships with his subjects, inside and outside the empire, rather than in inter-state terms that have come to
dominate modern international relations. Indeed, the “state” as such had no moral purpose in the traditional
Chinese case, imagined as it was by elites “as a patrimonial household bound together by artificial kinship.”22
And the term zhong guo (中國) that is now translated into “China” was used more in a cultural sense as an
acknowledgement of cultural excellence than in a statist sense as a “nation-state.”23 The empire of “China” was
in practice neither a territorial state nor a homogenous community. The Chinese “state” thus bore no obligation
of promoting Chinese civilization, but the emperor’s role as the embodiment of the Central Kingdom (zhong
guo 中國) or Central Civilization (hua xia 華夏) entailed a profound moral purpose of bringing propriety, order,
and peace to the world as one universal family presided over by the emperor as the patriarch.24
Thus, as we have seen, early Ming emperors repeatedly announced the nature of the world as one family
(tianxia yijia 天下一家). They positioned themselves as the ruler of this world family, rejecting any gulf
between the hua (culturally Chinese) and yi (culturally inferior non-Chinese) (hua yi wu jian 華夷無間). They
Ch.6 – 6
emphasized the hierarchical differentiation of the Chinese emperor as the superordinate ruler and all other
peoples as his subordinate subjects (junchen shangxia zhifen 君臣上下之分). They stressed the intention to
ensure peace and enable all peoples to have their proper places (wei yu yi an xian de qi suo 惟欲乂安咸得其
所), and declared the goal of sharing the fortune of peace (gongxiang taiping zhifu 共享太平之福) with them.
China’s central normative principle of relational rationality was already suggested by the concept of
expressive rationality posited in Chapter 2. We can now be more specific: It was almost perfectly captured by
the Confucian concepts of li (禮)—propriety in roles and relations—and yi (義)—optimal appropriateness—
grounded on expressive rationality. Indeed, li is seen by Confucian role ethics as the essential cement of society,
the universal principle of relational interaction, and the fundamental basis of world order.25 Reus-Smit notes
that organizing principles define the mode of differentiation.26 How li differentiated political units in East Asian
history was also explained in Chapter 2: Li embodied the logic of hierarchical differentiation, producing an
international network of distinct bilateral relationships between the Chinese emperor and non-Chinese rulers,
their strength or intimacy determined and differentiated according to foreign polities’ cultural affinity with
China.
What, specifically, did the Chinese conception of the propriety in roles and relations refer to? The central
component, as we have observed in the historical case studies, was the propriety of Serving the Great by the
Small (yi xiao shi da zhi li 以小事大之禮). This entailed a set of reciprocal obligations between the Chinese
emperor and foreign rulers centered on the mutual principle of integrity (cheng 誠). Foreign rulers were
required to observe the subordinate integrity of loyalty (zhong 忠), obedience (shun 順), and trustworthiness
(xin 信) for serving China as the great and superior polity; the Chinese emperor, the superordinate integrity of
moral excellence (de 德), humaneness (ren 仁), and grace (en 恩) for loving smaller and inferior polities (zi
xiao 字小). Thus, early Ming emperors repeatedly emphasized the importance of observing the propriety of
Serving the Great and reprimanded foreign rulers for lacking propriety or integrity when they were seen to be
failing this key obligation. Lacking integrity or propriety was considered a serious offense, often accused of in
terms of deceitfulness (zha 詐) and lack of gratitude (bu huai en 不懷恩), that must be rectified by improving
moral excellence and changing behavior (xiu de gai xing 脩德改行).
Ch.6 – 7
The third normative component of the constitutional structure of Chinese hegemony—the systemic norm of
procedural appropriateness—was well encapsulated by the Chinese term muyi guixiang (慕義歸向). That is,
foreign rulers were expected to emulate Chinese standards of appropriateness in relational conduct, submit to
Chinese authority, and transform themselves along the lines of Chinese culture and custom—or emulative
submission for short.27 Informed by the moral purpose of promoting an ethical world order and based on the
relational rationality of the propriety of Serving the Great by the Small and Loving the Small by the Great, the
Chinese conception of procedural appropriateness in the relationship between the Chinese emperor and foreign
rulers promoted the emperor’s cherishing of all those who came to submit as his vassals. His love of foreign
peoples would thus be demonstrated by such cherishing, and foreign rulers’ serving of China by their
submission.
The relationship that resulted from this procedural appropriateness was highly asymmetrical in form:
Unidirectional, it was always non-Chinese rulers or their envoys who came to offer emulative submission to the
emperor, never the other way around. Chinese envoys were dispatched only to perform ad hoc diplomatic
functions that should supposedly demonstrate Chinese humaneness rather than to purposefully maintain
diplomatic relations on a regular basis. Regular tributary relations were expected from abroad once initial
contacts were established, not consciously or actively maintained by China. Indeed, the Hongwu emperor’s
attempts to regulate tributary embassies by stipulating their frequencies, scales, and routes reflected an intention
to control and limit, rather than to enhance and increase, contact with foreign peoples.
The fundamental institution of tributary diplomacy
The constitutional structure of Chinese hegemony—characterized by the moral purpose of promoting a
universal ethical world order, the relational rationality of Serving the Great by the Small, and the procedural
appropriateness of emulative submission—shaped distinct institutional practices. The most significant of these
was the fundamental institution of tributary diplomacy. What were the essential institutional manifestations of
tributary diplomacy in East Asian history?
In the most obvious sense, tributary diplomacy refers to a diplomatic process whereby non-Chinese rulers or,
most often, their representatives, established official relations with China by coming to the Chinese court and
offering tribute in the form of native products to the Chinese emperor in token of their submission as the
Ch.6 – 8
emperor’s outer vassals. Such tributary embassy was variously referred to in Chinese sources as chaogong (朝
貢), zhigong (職貢), and laigong (來貢). The translation of the Chinese term gong into “tribute” is useful
(though not unproblematic)28 for conveying the hierarchical gift-exchange aspect—foreign tribute presentation
and Chinese bestowals in return—of the diplomatic process. But tribute should not be seen as the only or even
the main point of it. The main point was diplomatic communication, primarily affirming the mutual but unequal
authorities of the Chinese emperor and foreign rulers, sometimes also carrying out specific tasks of foreign
policy, and accompanied almost always by trade in the Chinese capital and on route.29
Tributary embassy constituted a fundamental institutional practice of Chinese hegemony because, as
explained above, China’s norm of procedural appropriateness required foreign rulers’ emulative submission as
the essential mechanism for establishing official relations. In other words, emulative submission by way of
tributary embassy was the only normatively sanctioned means of establishing and sustaining official relations
with China. In reality, of course, norm did not always translate into practice, and Chinese rulers under certain
circumstances may be willing to conduct foreign relations on a different basis. During periods of division or
weakness such as the Han (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) in the second century B.C. and the Song (960-1279), Chinese
rulers in effect approached foreign policy toward powerful nomadic rulers from a position of equality or even
inferiority. Even in times of Chinese unity and strength, hierarchy was not always the exclusive principle.
According to Joseph Fletcher, even the Yongle emperor was willing to compromise his claim of world authority
by addressing the ruler of the Timurid empire in Central Asia as an equal monarch. And outside of China,
Chinese ambassadors at different times accepted the equality of Herat, Lhasa, Kokand, and Moscow as “the
unseen side of a long-established tradition.”30 But tributary embassy was nonetheless China’s hegemonic
conception of international relations, and under the condition of Chinese hegemony such as during the early
Ming, it was substantially, though not completely, realized in practice. When Japanese and Mongol leaders
refused to pay tribute, we may say that the dynamics of their interactions with China were not reflected in
tributary diplomacy, but perhaps in other institutions such as war, trade, and communicative diplomacy to be
discussed below.
Conceiving of tributary diplomacy only in terms of foreign tributary embassy would, however, be too
narrow, for it describes only the initiatives of non-Chinese rulers and not those of China at all. On the Chinese
side, at least two other institutional practices need to be seen as important components of tributary diplomacy:
Ch.6 – 9
Chinese investiture and directive embassy. Investiture, known in Chinese as ce (册), feng (封), ceming (册命),
or cefeng (册封), refers to a political-diplomatic process whereby the Chinese emperor acted to confer the
authority and symbols of a high office (king, lord, general, etc.) on a foreign ruler, either in the Chinese court
on the occasion of a foreign ruler’s visit or on foreign soil during a Chinese diplomatic mission abroad.31 Early
Ming investitures of Korean, Japanese, and Mongol rulers all took place outside of China because none of them
visited the Ming court in person.
Chinese investiture and foreign tribute were not reciprocal in the sense that tributary embassy was
necessarily returned with investiture.32 In fact, Chinese investiture, reflecting the logic of hierarchical
differentiation discussed in Chapter 2, was discriminatively given only to rulers of political units perceived by
China as culturally close, politically important, or strategically useful. For example, the early Ming investiture
of Korean rulers was mainly based on Korea’s cultural affinity with China, but at times also strategically
motivated as in the Hongwu emperor’s withholding and granting of investiture to King U. Historically Chinese
investitures were granted to rulers of Korea, Vietnam, Japan, some Inner Asian tribes, and a few Southeast
Asian kingdoms—a very wide range indeed.33 Although perhaps not as noteworthy as tributary embassy,
Chinese investiture played the important role of establishing and confirming the varied political statuses of
polities within the international society of Chinese hegemony, thus contributing to the creation of a
hierarchically differentiated sinocentric world order. Even if not singled out as a distinct institution itself, it
should be seen as an important practice of the institution of tributary diplomacy. 34
But tributary embassy and Chinese investiture still do not represent the full institutional dynamics of
tributary diplomacy. We have seen in the case studies that when a tributary relationship was in operation, China
occasionally dispatched envoys for specialized tasks. All of the early Ming emperors, for example,
requisitioned horses from Korea. In the case of the Yongle emperor, the requisition list also included eunuchs,
virgins, paper, and Buddhist artifacts. And the Chinese envoys on those missions, usually eunuchs from the
emperor’s inner court, were frequently resented by the Koreans. We would need a concept such as “directive
embassy” to describe the institutional practice of China’s dispatching envoys to perform specific superordinate
diplomatic tasks as part of the institutional complex of tributary diplomacy.35 The Chinese ambassador was
always appointed only for an ad hoc task with a temporary stay at a guest lodge in the capital of his host
country, never as a permanent representative of the court with an official residence abroad. 36 The institution of
Ch.6 – 10
resident diplomats for permanent representation abroad was a modern European invention, reflecting a very
different understanding of the nature of diplomacy.
Tributary diplomacy was, then, a political and diplomatic process whereby non-Chinese rulers and the
Chinese emperor established and sustained a hierarchical relationship symbolized by the former’s tributary
submission and the latter’s investiture and injunctions for realizing their respective aspirations and interests. On
the whole, consistent with the nature of the procedural appropriateness of emulative submission, it was
asymmetrical in form, running more from the non-Chinese to the Chinese side than the other way around, and
often finding more enthusiasm in foreign polities than in the Chinese court. The precise institutional
composition of tributary diplomacy may vary historically. We have discussed three main components—
tributary embassy, Chinese investiture, and directive embassy—suggested by the early Ming experience. Other
forms may be found beyond the Ming, such as hostage taking during the Han and Tang.37 Informed by the
constitutional structure of Chinese hegemony, tributary diplomacy in all of those manifestations was always
hierarchical, asymmetrical, and bilateral.
Communicative diplomacy, war, and trade
Even with the establishment of proper tributary relations, China’s international relations were not always
captured by tributary diplomacy in terms of foreign tributary embassy and China’s investiture and directive
embassy. There was, to start with, another type of diplomacy conducted when Chinese hegemony was
incomplete or broken down. This is what I will call the institution of communicative diplomacy, whose function
was to establish contacts, probe intentions, gather intelligence, and perform other kinds of non-hierarchical and
non-tributary diplomatic tasks when proper tributary relations had yet to be established or had collapsed.
Thus, we have seen that early Ming emperors dispatched envoys to announce their enthronement to Korea,
Japan, and Mongol tribes before the establishment of official relations with them. They urged Japanese rulers to
take a particular policy stance such as suppressing piracy when proper tributary relations were nonexistent. And
they threatened Mongol chieftains with war once they discontinued tributary missions. And we should not
preclude the possibility of foreign rulers’ sending communicative rather than tributary embassies, a high
possibility for the Mongols and other Inner Asian peoples.
Second, war was also an important institutional practice of Chinese hegemony. Bull noted “a duel aspect” of
Ch.6 – 11
war in international society. Although it is a manifestation of disorder and therefore must be limited and
contained, war also has a positive role in the maintenance of international order.38 In principle such a duel
aspect should also manifest itself in East Asian history. War was a threat to international peace and stability
when fought for aggression, conquest, and colonization. But it may become an enforcer for peace and order
when fought in self-defense, on behalf of the victims of aggression, to restore a status quo ante, or to maintain
propriety and appropriateness.
In this regard, one may posit the Confucian understanding of punitive expedition—Confucianism’s own
theory of just, or, more accurately, “appropriate” war (yi zhan 義戰)—as one possible institution for
maintaining the international society of Chinese hegemony. The theory had apparently influenced the early
Ming emperors. The Hongwu emperor, for example, declared matter-of-factly to Japanese rulers that the loyal
must be cherished while the disobedient must be punished (fu shun fa ni 撫順伐逆). Their policies suggested
the condition of waging an “appropriate war” as when foreign rulers failed to observe the propriety of Serving
the Great and thus destabilized the ethical order based on such propriety. And they implied the purpose of such
wars as the restoration and promotion of an appropriate ethical order.
Thus, the Yongle emperor announced that “the disobedient must be exterminated” (niming zhe bi jianchu zhi
er 逆命者必殲除之耳), while justifying his wars as attempts to punish (tao 討) or rectify (zheng 正) the
“crimes” (zui 罪) committed by the Mongols. The Mongols’ accused lack of integrity (bu cheng 不誠), betrayal
of his grace (bei en 背恩), failing of his moral excellence (fu de 負德), and violation of trustworthiness and
appropriateness (weibei xin yi 違背信義) were sometimes deemed sufficient grounds for launching punitive
forces. We can neither believe such discourse at face value nor take for granted the alleged motivation of
maintaining a Confucian ethical order, since the theory of punitive expedition was just a cultural theory
reflecting the normative assumptions of Chinese rulers. “Punitive expeditions” as claimed by imperial Chinese
rulers were by no means inherently appropriate or justifiable. In fact, Chapter 5 argued that none of the Yongle
emperor’s campaigns into Mongolia could be justified purely on Confucian punitive grounds. We may,
however, allow the possibility of war understood as China’s punitive expedition as an institution of the society
of Chinese hegemony. But even if war is not so understood, it can still be seen as an important institution for
maintaining East Asian order. The best example was perhaps the Imjin War (1592-98) of the late Ming period
Ch.6 – 12
fought on Korean soil by joint Korean and Chinese forces to repel Japanese invasion of the peninsula.39
Third, trade also appeared as a supplementary institution of Chinese hegemony in five different forms. First,
the presentation ceremony of foreign “tributary goods” (gong pin 貢品) and Chinese gifts in reply carried out at
the Chinese court as the most formal part of official diplomacy was seen by many foreign envoys as a particular
form of trade.40 From the perspective of the Ming court, however, it was simply gift exchange, and the political
significance of the rite far outweighed the commercial value of the transaction. Second, the Ming court also
purchased the “private goods” (si wu 私物) imported by tributary missions at a rate usually higher than the
market value. Such transaction can certainly be seen as a distinct form of trade, as suggested by the Chinese
term of geijia (給價 giving value).41 Third, foreign envoys also traded their “private goods” inside China with
Chinese merchants and private persons alike, especially at the hui tong guan (會同館 College of Interpreters) in
the capital and at the shi bo si (市舶司 Office of Merchant Ships) in the coastal cities of Ningbo, Quanzhou,
and Guangzhou. Fourth, occasionally the Ming court directly dispatched international trade missions, as was
partly the purpose of the Zheng He expeditions.42 These four forms of trade may be seen as “tributary trade”
embedded within the institution of tributary diplomacy discussed above.43
In the fifth form and beyond tributary trade, however, the Ming government also established specialized tea
and horse markets on its frontiers for mutual trade between peoples on both sides, such as with Korea, the
Jurchens, and the Uriyanghkha Mongols in the northeast and with other Mongols and Inner Asian peoples in the
northwest.44 In addition, private maritime trade on the southern coast still took place despite the official
maritime prohibition.45 Thus trade was also frequently practiced outside tributary diplomacy, 46 even eclipsing it
at times.47 But it is true that while the Yongle emperor seemed to understand the role of trade, in general trade
was a marginal element in early Ming foreign relations and was viewed unfavorably as a policy instrument. It is
therefore appropriate to characterize it as a supplementary institution of early-Ming Chinese hegemony.
In all, then, the international society of Chinese hegemony was characterized by at least four distinct
institutional practices informed by its constitutional structure: tributary diplomacy, communicative diplomacy,
war, and trade (see Table 6.1). Tributary diplomacy was the most significant and fundamental—though not the
only noteworthy—institution.
[Table 6.1 about here]
Ch.6 – 13
How did these institutions contribute to order in the society of Chinese hegemony? Buzan identifies five
functions primary institutions may play in international society: membership, authoritative communication,
limits to the use of force, allocation of property rights, and sanctity of agreements.48 Tributary diplomacy
helped to define the membership of China’s hegemonic society and assign differential political statuses to its
tributary vassals in this hierarchical society. It sustained authoritative communication between the Chinese
emperor and foreign rulers. It routinely affirmed their unequal relationships, facilitated adjustment to changing
realities, and resolved policy issues as they arose, thus contributing to the health and solidity of their
relationships.49 It at times restrained the use of force by promoting an ethical world order, by encouraging
relational propriety, by mediating disputes, and by offering security protection.50 And it either allowed trade and
commerce within limits (as during the Ming and Qing) or encouraged and expanded them (as during the Tang,
Song, and Yuan).
Communicative diplomacy played the more prosaic role of carrying out normal, non-tributary relations
between China and its neighbors. War to varying degrees served to defend against aggression, preserve peace,
punish transgressors of propriety, and restore order and stability. Trade played the straightforward but very
important function of exchanging material goods for peoples in need. In the mid-late Ming, for example, trade
was the key institution—indeed, the sine qua non—for keeping peace between the Chinese and the Mongols.51
It also helped to satisfy the commercial desires of merchants and even state authorities.
The strategic and normative foundations of international institutions
One more point needs to be made. In studying international institutions, scholars have commonly focused on
the analytical tasks of explaining institutional formation52 and differentiating institutional forms and
functions.53 These questions are implicitly addressed above and can certainly be given a more detailed
treatment. Rather than reinforcing them, however, it may be more useful to emphasize a different question:
actors’ varied use of international institutions. Even fundamental institutions do not always constitute actor
identities or define the “rules of the game” in a given era. The early Ming experience suggests that fundamental
institutions can be normatively constitutive, but also instrumentally strategic.
If the argument that tributary diplomacy, communicative diplomacy, war, and trade were durable and
fundamental institutions makes sense, then it would appear that while they generally defined the rules of the
Ch.6 – 14
game of China’s hegemonic international relations, they did not always—or even usually—constitute the
identities and interests of the players. The point was made clear enough in the case studies. Only in the grand
strategies of expressive hierarchy and identification can one say that the institution of tributary diplomacy
constituted China and its neighbors. Instrumental hierarchy and deference were strategic manipulations of
tributary diplomacy for self-interest maximization. The adoption of all of these four strategies in the form of
tributary diplomacy revealed the strategic as well as normative use of this fundamental institution by both
China and its neighbors, and its regulative as well as constitutive roles.54 Since instrumental hierarchy and
deference were more frequently employed than expressive hierarchy and identification, the strategic use and
regulative role of tributary diplomacy as a fundamental institution appeared more prominent than its normative
and constitutive dimension.
This suggests a larger theoretical point: The constitutive and regulative roles of norms and institutions are
never absolute. They always come in degrees, just like the distinction between instrumental rationality and
expressive rationality, or between the strategies of instrumental hierarchy and expressive hierarchy, and of
deference and identification. In practice, strategic interests and norms, instrumental rationality and expressive
rationality, typically asserted themselves in greater or lesser degrees.
The Tribute System in Chinese Hegemony
What may be the contribution of this institutional analysis to the existing literature on historical East Asian
politics? Until the 1980s, the field of East Asian diplomatic history had been dominated by the tribute system
paradigm established by Fairbank and his associates from the 1930s to the 1960s.55 This paradigm proposed the
“Chinese world order” as the overarching concept for understanding regional relations—a world order
established and maintained through the tribute system as “the medium for Chinese international relations and
diplomacy.” The tribute system was seen to have dominated regional relations as “a scheme of things entire.”56
It was, asserted Mark Mancall, “a total system for the conduct of all international relations.”57
This paradigm has been the foundational framework for our understanding of historical East Asian politics,
and provided a major inspiration for recent IR research too. David Kang in the constructivist scholarship and
Yongjin Zhang and Barry Buzan in the English School tradition are most notable for taking an institutionalist
Ch.6 – 15
perspective on the tribute system.58 Conceptualizing it as a distinctive set of international rules and institutions,
Kang argues that the East Asian order during the fourteenth-nineteenth centuries “encompassed a regionally
shared set of formal and informal norms and institutions that guided relations and yielded substantial stability.
With the main institution of the ‘tribute system’, this international system emphasized formal hierarchy among
nations while allowing considerable informal equality.”59 In comparing the tribute system in East Asia with the
Westphalian system in Europe,60 Kang takes the tribute system to be an international order in itself. Similarly,
Zhang and Buzan conceptualize it “as a particular historical social structure in East Asia, or as a particular set
of institutional and discursive practices that define, govern and regulate the so-called Pax Sinica.”61 In another
place they simply see it “as an international society.”62
It is certainly possible and useful to see the tribute system—understood as a set of habitual and durable
practices of international relations among China and its neighbors—as forming a distinct international society.
Tributary diplomacy, as discussed above, would constitute its fundamental institution embodying its primary
norms, rules, and principles. The case studies of early-Ming Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, and Sino-Mongol
relations illustrated in great empirical detail how this fundamental institution actually operated during this
period. Indeed, the theory and case studies revealed the varying constraints that the fundamental institution of
tributary diplomacy brought to bear on the members of the international society of Chinese hegemony.
In this regard, one contribution of this book lies in providing the actual causal processes whereby tributary
diplomacy exerted its institutional effects on actor behavior. The causal processes are theorized and analyzed in
terms of the grand strategic interactions between early Ming China and its neighbors. The relational theory of
grand strategy developed in Chapter 2 is a structural theory. But the grand strategic possibilities deduced there
reveal the agential side of regional relations. No contradiction exists between saying that the theoretical
approach is relational-structural by taking relations as the primary structural component and that this
relationalism provides insights into agency and process. Agency is sorely needed because existing institutional
approaches tend to focus too much on the social structure of the tribute system to the neglect of strategic
processes involving the agents in creating and shaping that structure in the first place. They lack causal
mechanisms to explain the origins and operations of international institutions and societies. The lack of
sustained attention to agency makes it difficult to explain where the powerful social structure of the tribute
system emerged in the first place and, equally important, why and how it changed over time.63 The fundamental
Ch.6 – 16
questions of “how to construe the relationship between institutions and behavior and how to explain the process
whereby institutions originate or change”64 are ignored.
The approaches of Kang and Zhang and Buzan tend to produce a skewed picture more about the social
structure of the tribute system that ordered relations, less about the practical agents that sustained those
relations, and still less about structure-agency mutual constitution by way of those relations. Addressing these
questions is not the main focus of this book, but the theoretical and empirical analyses have provided some
answers to them in an indirect way. The institutional effects of tributary diplomacy were reflected in four
strategies that China and other actors adopted toward each other. These were the Chinese strategies of
expressive hierarchy and instrumental hierarchy, and other actors’ strategies of identification and deference.
Expressive hierarchy and identification embodied the constitutive effects of the institution of tributary
diplomacy; instrumental hierarchy and deference, the regulative effects. In expressive hierarchy and
identification, actors accepted the rules and norms of tributary diplomacy as legitimate. In instrumental
hierarchy and deference, they exploited them for self-interest maximization. The processes in which these four
strategies came about were also the processes whereby the fundamental institution of tributary diplomacy
originated and developed. The effects of the three other fundamental institutions—communicative diplomacy,
war, and trade—were reflected in the other two strategies of exit and access that other actors adopted toward
China. They represented attempts to twist, resist, ignore, or challenge the Chinese conceit of tributary
diplomacy, demonstrating the changes in institutional practices as actors’ interests and strategies changed. The
relational processes of grand strategic interactions detailed in the case studies at the same time embodied the
agency of institutional origination and change. They illustrated empirically how structure-agency coconstitution worked in the early-Ming East Asian society.
Clearly, tributary diplomacy was an extremely consequential institution. The norms, rules, and principles it
embodied, and the strategies by which it exercised its practical effects, were historically distinctive and
significant. Indeed, conceiving of the tribute system as an international society, as Kang suggests, offers the
advantage of comparing it with other international societies such as the modern Westphalian one. Such
comparison will make us far more sensitive to the variety of international societies and more aware of the
contingent nature of the contemporary international society.
Yet the limits of the tribute system as an international society in East Asian history should also be
Ch.6 – 17
recognized. Kang and Zhang and Buzan recognize these limits. Kang identifies a core of “Confucian society”
within the tribute system, and a different international society of the nomadic world with a different set of
rules.65 “It is best,” he advises, “to view the tribute system as the starting point for international relations, and
all the states modified, changed, and sometimes ignored these basic ideas as circumstances dictated.”66
Similarly, Zhang and Buzan differentiate between a core of the tribute system among the Sinicized states and a
peripheral power-political society between China and its nomadic neighbors as two structurally different
international societies of the inner and outer circle of a concentric Chinese world order. In this regard, the
complexity that existed within an overarching set of institutional and normative ideals defined by the tribute
system, particularly the ways in which these ideals were followed, ignored, and modified in particular times and
places, becomes especially interesting to examine. Again, such complexity is in part captured by the variety of
secondary strategic reponses to China including identification, deference, access, and exit explored in this book.
Like modern Westphalian sovereignty, which Stephen Krasner famously characterized as “organized
hypocrisy,”67 the historical East Asian tribute system was also an incomplete yet significant system of
international relations.
From the perspective of this study, the tribute system cannot be seen to encompass the whole gamut of
historical East Asian politics, for tributary diplomacy was not the only fundamental institution of regional
relations. The strategic choices and institutional practices analyzed in this book show that the regional
international society of Chinese hegemony was much broader and more multifaceted than the tribute system.
Historical research on other periods of regional politics confirms that the great variety of China’s power
relations with its neighbors cannot be portrayed simply as tributary relations.68 Tribute, however conceived,
could not encompass the totality of diplomacy in East Asian history,69 not to mention all other interaction
dynamics. In short, one needs to delimit the scope or boundary of the tributary system in a given historical
period quite carefully in order to avoid giving the misleading impression that it was coterminous with the East
Asian society as a whole.
Conclusion
Drawing on the preceding chapters, this chapter provides a theoretically informed and empirically grounded
Ch.6 – 18
institutional analysis of the early-Ming East Asian society of Chinese hegemony. The analysis serves to delimit
the scope of the much-noted tribute system in East Asian history. The tribute system was a very important part
of the society of Chinese hegemony, but was not all of it. Nor was the fundamental institution of tributary
diplomacy always dominant in regional relations. Other institutions including communicative diplomacy, war,
and trade were more significant during various periods of Sino-Japanese and Sino-Mongol relations. Delimiting
the historical scope of the tribute system also exposes the limits of the “Chinese world order” as conceived by
Fairbank. The tribute system was far from “a scheme of things entire,” and an all-encompassing “Chinese world
order” was more imaginary than real.70 “Chinese hegemony” is a more defensible concept to describe a good
part of historical East Asian politics because “hegemony” suggests China’s regional primacy and authority
while also implying their limits.
1
Waldron 2005, 10.
2
Layne 2006, 4.
3
Waltz 1979. For critiques see Milner 1991; Hobson and Sharman 2005; Donnelly 2006; Lake 2007, 2009a,
2009b.
4
On this point, see also Zhang 2014.
5
Bull 2012, 71.
6
Buzan 2004, 181.
7
Reus-Smit 1999, 14.
8
Ibid., 6.
9
Zhang and Buzan 2012. Also see Zhang 2001.
10
Reus-Smit 1999, 31.
11
Clark 2011, 4.
12
The major exception is the Song; see Ge 2011, chap 1 and Standen 2007. Other exceptions such as the Ming
and Qing also exist, see Tsai 2012, 132; Wan 2011, 193-96; Wang 2008, 1580-1581. Also see Lary 2007 for a
related treatment on the issue of border in Chinese history.
13
Cf. Gan 2007, 30-2; Wang L. 2009, 58-60; Liu and Jin 2006, 110-11.
14
For a conception of “ethnic sovereignty” in the case of the Qing empire, see Elliott 2001.
Ch.6 – 19
15
On the differences between yi and justice, see Cheng 1997.
16
Cf. Li 2010, 120-21, 178, and 190.
17
Tu 1989, 48.
18
Chan 2008, 70 (emphasis in original).
19
The translation is taken from Wang 1968, 54.
20
Whitney 1969, 30.
21
See Brook 2010. Tianxia literally means “all under heaven.” In practice it can mean either “the world of
China” or “the world” more broadly construed. See Ames 2011, 267; Xing 2011, 95.
22
Skaff 2012, 15.
23
Wang E. 2003, 178. See also Whitney 1969, 26.
24
On Confucian familism in politics, see Wong 2011, 777; Chan 2008, 64-6.
25
See Hall and Ames 1998, 270-72; Schwartz 1985, 67.
26
Reus-Smit 1999, 32.
27
See, for example, MSL, Taizong shi lu, 14.0262.
28
See Elliott 2009, 128-29; Millward 2007, 73; Wan 2011, 130; Brook 2010, 5; Luo 2007, 203.
29
Cf. Elliott 2009, 127.
30
Fletcher 1968, 206-24; Reid 2009, 5. See also Rossabi 1998, 250.
31
Investiture itself, however, should not be seen as a unique Chinese institution. It was in fact a common
diplomatic institution in the wider Eurasian region. See Skaff 2012.
32
Wan 2011, 81.
33
Gao 2008, 20, 22, 60, 137, and 219.
34
Cf. Ren 2010, 103; Li 2004: 1.
35
Cf. Wan 2011, 124.
36
Wang Z. 2005, 34.
37
Skaff 2012, 197-98.
38
Bull 2012, 181-83.
39
See Swope 2009.
Ch.6 – 20
40
Cf. Rossabi 1975, 71.
41
Zhao 2013, 103. Cf. Rossabi 1998, 240.
42
Wan 2011, 15.
43
For a concise discussion of tributary trade during the early Ming, see Chao 2005, 50-57. For a more
comprehensive discussion on the Ming trade system, see Li 2007.
44
Serruys 1967, 171; Rossabi 1975, 20; Perdue 2005, 36.
45
Deng 1997, 267; Lee 1999, 14; Chao 2005, 62. Cf. Abu-Lughod 1989, 317.
46
Millward 1998; Di Cosmo 2003.
47
Cf. Fairbank 1953, 23-8.
48
Buzan 2004, 188-89.
49
Cf. Womack 2010, 32; Wills 2012.
50
For example, the Hongwu emperor tried to mediate conflicts between Annam and Champa and among the
three kings of Liuqiu (Ryukyu); the Yongle emperor tried to restrain Siam from threatening Melaka, Champa,
and Samudera, to protect Melaka and Brunei from the threat of Java, and even to mediate conflicts within the
ruling house of the powerful Timurid empire. See Wang 1998, 309; Wan 2011, 85; Wan 2000, 69-70; Zhang
2006, 227.
51
See Waldron 1990.
52
See, for example, Reus-Smit 1999.
53
See, for example, Buzan 2004.
54
On constitutive and regulative rules, see Ruggie 1998, 22-5.
55
Fairbank 1942, 1953, 1968a, 1968b; Fairbank and Teng 1941.
56
Fairbank and Teng 1941, 137 and 139.
57
Mancall 1984, 20 (emphasis in original).
58
It should be noted that Fairbank also referred to tribute as an institution in a general sense; see Fairbank 1953,
chap 2. For a realist view, see Wang 2013.
59
Kang 2010, 54.
60
Ibid., 14.
Ch.6 – 21
61
Zhang and Buzan 2012, 7. There is a clear continuity in recent English School conceptions of traditional East
Asian international society; see Zhang 2001 and Suzuki 2009.
62
Zhang and Buzan 2012, 23.
63
Cf. Checkel 1998, 339.
64
Hall and Taylor 1996, 937.
65
Kang 2010, 10.
66
Ibid., 55.
67
Krasner 1999.
68
Wang Z. 2005, 219.
69
Wan 2011, 124.
70
For a critique of the concept, see Vuving 2009. Joshua A. Fogel (2009) suggests a model of the Sinosphere as
a more satisfactory alternative.
Ch.6 – 22