China’s Cultural Influence on its Neighbors

China's East Asian Neighbors

China was a dominant force in the East Asian world. As a result, China had a significant impact on its neighbors. While having strong cultural traditions of their own, its neighbors Japan, Korea, and Vietnam adopted various Chinese cultural traditions. In the case of independent Korea and Japan, this adoption was primarily voluntary. Under the direct control of China for nearly 1000 years, Vietnam experienced more forced adoption of certain Chinese cultural elements.

For much of its early history, Japan remained isolated from the rest of East Asia. It developed a feudal system in which feudal lords gained power and wealth by owning vast expanses of land on which peasants and serfs cultivated rice. This feudal system was similar to Europe during the middle-ages (600 – 1300).

While Japan had an emperor, for much of Japanese history, emperors held little actual power. Real power rested with Japan’s powerful feudal lords. In the 7th century, unnerved by rising Chinese power, Prince Shotoku (574-622) embarked on a series of reforms to voluntarily adopt certain Chinese practices to strengthen the state and remove power from Japanese feudal lords.

Korea’s proximity to China led to significant interaction between the two neighbors. China had attempted to conquer and subdue Korea on several occasions– most attempts failed. During the Chinese Tang dynasty (618 – 907), the powerful Korean kingdom of Silla agreed to become a tributary state of China and perform the ritual kowtow before the emperor. This tributary relationship increased the diffusion of Chinese culture in Korea.

Vietnam had a much more adversarial relationship with China. For most of the period from 111 B.C.E. to 938 C.E., the Chinese occupied and controlled large portions of Vietnam. The Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. – 206 C.E.) was the first to enter Vietnam. During the first few hundred years of occupation, many Chinese refugees and migrants moved into Vietnamese territory. Large portions of land were taken from Vietnamese nobles and given to newly settled Chinese immigrants. These migrants and the Chinese government, military officials, Confucian scholars, and traders that came with Chinese colonization introduced Chinese culture to Vietnam. However, despite the significant pressure of Chinese culture on Vietnam, the Vietnamese resisted outright cultural domination.

What Was China's Political Impact on East Asia?

China was the dominant political force in East Asia for much of early history. Many of China’s neighbors adopted Chinese government practices. Many South and East Asian states joined China’s tribute system.

China's political impacts on Japan

In the late 6th and early 7th centuries, Japan began to adopt a series of government reforms to increase the Japanese government’s power and efficiency.

These reforms started when Prince Shotoku Taishi (574-622) wrote a new constitution modeled on China’s government.
Prince Taishi removed power from regional leaders and centralize control and leadership under the Chinese emperor and build bureaucratic government departments staffed by individuals chosen by merit through a Chinese-style examination system.
The Japanese also created a new legal code written to mimic the Chinese legal code.
Prince Shotoku’s successor kept the reforms alive by further consolidating power within the government by putting all farmland under government ownership and requiring that all taxes be paid to the government, not the nobility.
In 710, the Japanese capital was moved and rebuilt to imitate the Chinese capital of Chang’an. During these years of reform, Japan also became a Chinese tributary state.

During the early Heian period in Japan (794-1195), the powerful Fujiwara family managed to control the Japanese imperial throne and limit Japan’s numerous regional lords’ power. This limiting of feudal power allowed Chinese reforms to prosper. However, in the 10th and 11th centuries, Japan’s centralized control began to weaken and break down.

Reasons the Japanese centralized bureaucracy began to break down

Excessive population growth
Declining food production
Competition for power between noble Japanese families

As a result of these factors, Japanese society became less stable, and the power of the Fujiwara family weakened. Regional military leaders and nobles again began to gain at the expense of the central government.

The Genpei War broke out between 1180–1185 and ended with a military leader, the Shogun, given the power to collect taxes. If you control the money, you control society.

The emperor was again effectively powerless and reduced to a ceremonial figurehead (no real political power). Japan slipped back into another 650 years of feudalism. Centralized and bureaucratic government power ended as local feudal nobility controlled their local regions within Japan and remained weekly loyal to the Shogun.

China's political impacts on Korea

Korea grew up in the shadow of its powerful neighbor China. Despite periodic attempts to control its smaller neighbor, various Korean dynasties managed to retain their independence from China. Although, they did pay necessary tribute to China.

The Korean nobility had much more power than the nobility in China. As a result, Korean elites, looking to protect their privilege, resisted many attempted reforms to the Korean state. This resistance prevented the Korean examination system from being open to non-noble applicants like its Chinese counterpart. As a result, the nobility retained its control over the government bureaucracy and limited non-nobles from rising in power and status.

China's political impacts on Vietnam

China directly ruled Vietnam for many hundreds of centuries. Chinese leadership imposed Chinese governing systems upon Vietnam.

Native Chinese kept the most powerful government positions for themselves.
The Chinese recruited local Vietnamese using a Chinese-style examination system to run the lower levels of the government bureaucracy.
Preparing for this exam meant locals were also required to attend Confucian-based schools.

When the Tang dynasty (618 – 907) weakened, the Vietnamese loosened China’s grip over their government and territory. By the 10th century, Vietnam had gained its independence. However, it remained a tributary state to China.

The independent Vietnamese states retained many of the administrative practices that the Chinese had introduced. Local rulers also adopted the idea of the Mandate of Heaven.

What Was China's Cultural Impact on East Asia?

As a regional superpower, Chinese culture was also influential. Because Japan and Korea remained unconquered by China, their borrowing of Chinese culture was largely voluntary. Due to Chinese colonization, Vietnam often had Chinese culture imposed upon them.

The power of Chinese culture is primarily derived from its adoption by elites within East Asian nations.
Written Chinese became the elite regional language across Eurasia. It was the language in which many governments and religious scholars composed official documents.
Knowing how to speak, read, and write Chinese was a mark of elite status in East Asia until recent centuries.

What Was China's Impact on East Asian women?

With China’s imposing cultural presence in the East Asia region, Confucian patriarchy placed pressure on women’s rights and status within China’s neighbors’ societies. While women were not equal to men in either Japan, Korea, or Vietnam, they traditionally held more social rights and status than women did in China. The effect of Chinese culture on women in these societies was not uniform. In Korea, women experienced restrictions that rivaled even the restrictions placed on women in China, while in Japan and Vietnam, women escaped the most repressive features of Confucian patriarchy.

Confucian patriarchy in Japan

Japanese women faired better than Korean women and largely escaped the worst aspects of Confucian patriarchy.

Women were not completely secluded in their homes.
Widows could remarry.
Women did not have their feet bound.
Women retained the right to divorce,
Women could inherit family property.
Women could live away from their husbands, and sometimes families lived with the wife’s family, not the husbands.
Many elite women in the Heian period (794-1195) were educated and could write in Japanese. Because most elite men were engaged with government business and wrote in Chinese, women wrote much of Japan’s most famous literary works from this period in their history.

After the 12th-century, women in Japan did begin to lose status. This change had more to do with the reemergence of Japanese feudalism than Japan’s relationship with China.

Confucian patriarchy in Korea

As a result of Confucian patriarchy entering Korean culture, women saw a substantial decrease in their social status.

Women lost the ability to choose their husbands as families began picking husbands for their daughters.
Married women became the property of their husband’s families. Married couples went from being buried with the wife’s family to being buried with the husband’s family.
Women were discouraged from singing and dancing in public.
Remarriage rights for widows and female property ownership rights also eroded.

Restrictions on elite Korean women surpassed restrictions placed on elite Chinese women.

Confucian patriarchy in Vietnam

Like their Japanese counterparts, women in Vietnam retained a higher degree of freedom than women in Korea. It remained common for women to choose their husbands. Married couples also sometimes continued to live with the wife’s family. Traditional Vietnamese religion consisted of various female goddesses. After Buddhism’s adoption, traditional female goddesses retained their importance, and Vietnamese Buddhism adopted a female avatar of Buddha.

China’s Cultural Influence on its Neighbors

Learning Objective 1

Historical Development 1

Historical Development 2

Historical Development 3

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