The Tongking Gulf Through History

2. Jiaozhi (Giao Chi) in the Han Period Tongking Gulf

Chapter 2 Jiaozhi (Giao Chı  ) in the Han Period Tongking Gulf Li Tana This chapter introduces early Jiaozhi, a territorial unit covering the present-day Red River plains, coastal Guangxi, and western Guangdong, and discusses its importance in the exchange system of the Gulf of Tongking and South China Sea nearly two millennia ago. Contrary to conventional scholarship, which has stressed political forces pushing from north to south that resulted in Chinese colonization of the Red River plain, this chapter examines early Jiaozhi in its own context, as a territorial expanse occupying the same horizontal line. It argues that, by eliminating the once powerful Nanyue (southern Yue) kingdom in 111 B.C.E., the Han dynasty established Jiaozhi’s dominant trading position as both market and entrepôt for goods brought by land and sea. Jiaozhi’s emergence as the jewel of the Han south highlights the importance of the Gulf of Tongking for the early maritime silk road, as well as revealing the mutual interdependence of the region of modern Guangxi and the Red River plain so long ago. Guangzhou (Canton) and Jiaozhi The Nanyue kingdom, based in present-day Guangzhou (Canton), had enjoyed a commanding position on the Tongking Gulf coast until the Han conquest in 111 B.C.E., after which the southern political and economic center of gravity moved to Jiaozhi. This change seemed to have resulted from a deliberate Han policy; but why would the dynasty want to favor Jiaozhi and suppress Guangzhou? The most 40 Li Tana obvious answer, from a central government viewpoint, is that Jiaozhi was easier to access and control. Until the eighth century, when the Five Passes land route was opened to Guangdong, the gulf region was always better connected to central China, thanks to the Ling canal (“Smart Trench”), which had been dug between 223 and 214 B.C.E to transport Qin troops south. It linked the Yangzi with the Xiang River in Hunan, from where traffic accessed the Li River in Guangxi and the North and South Liu Rivers leading to the Hepu maritime port. This important economic corridor also formed the confluence of the two major cultures of southern China—the Chu and Yue—as is shown by the large number of Han tombs uncovered along it.1 It was also a strategically significant route. In 40 C.E., after the Trưng sisters rebelled in Jiaozhi, the forces of the “Wave-Calming General ” Ma Yuan, who was ordered to put down the rebellion, took this very route to Jiaozhi.2 A land route also existed, running from today’s Liuzhou via the Yu River to the Southern Pass. By both land and water, Guangxi thus held a crucial position. Jiaozhi also provided the court with easier access to Yunnan and beyond,3 by a route that went up the Red River to Yunnan before pushing on to the overland “yak road” (maoniu dao) in modern Sichuan.4 Most important, Jiaozhi was the nearest point between the Han court and the maritime silk road before it became possible to travel across the open sea in the eighth century. Sea travel favored Canton. Until then, Canton’s earlier access to Southeast Asia had necessarily passed via its contacts with Jiaozhi. All these factors worked in favor of Jiaozhi, whose prosperity it helped to sustain until the eighth century. The Gulf of Tongking—Economic Center of the Early South China Sea Trade Thanks in part to the factors discussed above, from the first to the tenth century, when Guangzhou and the lands to its east became the most populous in the far south of the Han Empire, the lands along the littoral rim of the extended Gulf of Tongking ruled over the South China Sea economy. In 2 C.E. Jiaozhi reported four times as many households as Guangzhou, and even the population of what is now Thanh Hóa Province (Jiuzhen, or Cửu Chân in Vietnamese) was roughly double that of Guangzhou (see Table 2.1).5 The disparity is equally striking in terms of household distribution along the extended Gulf of Tongking littoral rim: 34 percent in modern eastern Guangxi (85,323 households), 58 percent in current northern and north-central Vietnam (143,643 households), but only 8 percent in the Guangdong area (see Figure 2.1). Jiaozhi’s population density was also remarkably higher than that of Guangdong...