1.1B: China’s Cultural Influence on its Neighbors

China Has Traditionally Been an Influential Force in East Asia

Main idea

Chinese culture influenced neighboring cultures’ governments, social systems, and gender relationships. Confucianism, Buddhism, and the Chinese language and writing system had the most significant impacts.

China’s size and large population throughout history gave it influence across East Asia. Its neighbors, especially Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, have adopted various Chinese traditions throughout their histories. Because Korea and Japan remained independent from China, their cultural borrowing from China was usually voluntary. Due to centuries of Chinese control and colonization, Vietnam’s adoption of Chinese culture was often involuntary.

Chinese governing systems spread throughout East Asia

As Chinese dynasties became increasingly powerful, neighbors imitated Chinese governing systems to strengthen their own dynasties.

!Ap exam alert!

Pay close attention to how Japan’s government changed over time. Specifically, how it was feudal, centralized, and then feudal again.

For much of its history, Japan was a feudal society where powerful feudal lords owned vast expanses of land on which peasants and serfs cultivated rice. While there was an emperor, the feudal lords held most actual political power. This arrangement changed when Prince Shotoku (574-622) embarked on a series of reforms to voluntarily adopt certain Chinese practices to strengthen the Japanese state and remove power from the feudal lords.

Prince Shotoku wrote a new constitution that:

Removed power from regional leaders by requiring taxes be paid to the central government and emperor, not feudal lords
Built a bureaucratic government staffed by individuals chosen by merit through a Chinese-style examination system
Created a Chinese-style legal code
Put all farmland under government ownership.

Japan returns to feudalism: This new government lasted for several hundred years before Japan reverted to feudalism. In 1185, the powerful land-owning Minamoto clan seized power from the Japanese emperor. While the emperor legally remained the highest authority in Japan, the newly installed military ruler, the Shogun, held the real power. Japan slipped back into another 650 years of feudalism as powerful regional landlords and their personal samurai armies again controlled pieces of Japan. These feudal lords maintained weak links with the military Shogun.

Despite periodic attempts by China to control its smaller neighbor, various Korean dynasties retained their independence. However, Korean leaders voluntarily adopted Chinese governing systems they felt would strengthen their kingdoms. Adopted systems included:

Centralizing the state
Bureaucratic systems
A Confucian-style examination system for government employment
A new capital modeled on the Chinese capital city of Chang’an.

Differences between Chinese and Korean government systems: The Korean aristocratic landowning class was more powerful than the same class 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-aristocratic applicants like its Chinese counterpart. As a result, the aristocratic class retained its control over the government bureaucracy and limited non-nobles from rising in power and status.

From 111 B.C.E to 938 C.E., the Chinese occupied, controlled, and colonized large portions of Vietnam. During the first few hundred years of occupation, many Chinese refugees and migrants moved into Vietnamese territory. Chinese leaders took enormous quantities of land from Vietnamese nobles and gave it to newly settled Chinese immigrants. Native Chinese kept the most powerful government positions for themselves.

Chinese leadership imposed Chinese governing systems upon Vietnam, including:

A centralized and bureaucratic state
A Chinese-style examination system
A Confucian-educated governing class.

Vietnam gained its independence: By the 10th century, Vietnam had gained its independence. However, it remained a tributary state to China. Independent Vietnam retained many of the administrative practices that the Chinese had introduced. Local rulers also adopted the idea of the Mandate of Heaven.

Connection to prior learning

At one time or another, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam were all participants in the Chinese tribute system.

Chinese culture spread throughout East Asia

Culture also diffused from China to its neighbors.

Korea was an enthusiastic adopter of Chinese culture.

Confucianism: The government opened Confucian schools in Korea, and Korean students went to China to study Confucianism. Ideas of filial piety, respect for elders, and social superiors became essential elements of Korean culture.
Buddhism: Buddhism mixed with traditional Korean religious beliefs and became the most widespread spiritual practice. Buddhist monks from China came to Korea, and Koreans went to China to study Buddhism.
The Chinese language and writing script: Because Confucian and Buddhist texts were written in Chinese, Korean elites and scholars adopted the Chinese writing system. In the 15th century, Koreans developed a uniquely Korean alphabet (Hangul), which worked off phonetic sounds and not symbols like the Chinese writing system.
Elite culture and fashion: Korean elites wore Chinese clothing and fabrics. Korean art and music also developed Chinese-inspired characteristics.

Chinese culture first entered Japan as Korean refugees fled conflict between Korean kingdoms on the Korean peninsula. Chinese cultural elements that became common in Japan included the following:

Confucian ideas: Filial piety became a guiding principle in Japanese social relationships. A child’s duty and responsibility to their parents and family is still a person’s most important social responsibility in modern Japan.
Buddhism: As Buddhist culture developed, it influenced art, architecture, education, and general views on life and death.
The Chinese writing system: Around the year 700, an imperial government school opened to train the sons of Japanese nobility in the Chinese language and literary classics, including the writings of Confucius. It quickly became standard practice for government officials and religious scholars to write official documents in Chinese. Many male Japanese poets and authors also wrote their works in Chinese.

Chinese cultural influenced Vietnam in similar ways to Korea and Japan.

Confucianism: The sons of elites learned Confucian practices and rituals in Confucian schools in Vietnam and China.
Buddhism: Buddhism also heavily influenced Vietnam. Buddhism remains one of the most practiced belief systems in modern Vietnam. Buddhist influence in Vietnam came from China and its other Southeast Asian neighbors.
Vietnamese language and writing script: Elites also adopted the Chinese language to write government documents and read religious texts. While the Vietnamese adopted certain Chinese words, they retained their unique Vietnamese language. Vietnam also developed its own writing script for the Vietnamese language (Chu nom).

Chinese patriarchy affected women throughout East Asia

Many societies throughout history have been patriarchal. China did not invent it. However, as Confucian ideas spread to new areas in East Asia, patriarchy in those areas also increased.

The arrival of Confucianism most negatively impacted Korean women. New restrictions on elite Korean women often surpassed restrictions placed on elite Chinese women.

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.
Couples went from being buried with wives’ families after death to being buried with husbands’ families.
Women were discouraged from singing and dancing in public.
Widows’ ability to remarry and female property ownership rights also decreased.

Japanese women 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.

Women kept traditional Japanese culture alive during the Heian period (794-1185): Even though Japan emulated aspects of Chinese culture, they also developed uniquely Japanese culture. While elite men wrote in Chinese, educated noble women continued to write in traditional Japanese. One such noblewoman wrote the Tale of Genji in the 11^th century. Many literary experts consider this story of a Japanese prince and his romances to be the world’s first novel.

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.

1.1B: China’s Cultural Influence on its Neighbors

Learning Objective 1B

Historical Development 1

Historical Development 2

Historical Development 3

Contents

China Has Traditionally Been an Influential Force in East Asia

Chinese governing systems spread throughout East Asia

Chinese culture spread throughout East Asia

Chinese patriarchy affected women throughout East Asia