Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia: A History of Diplomacy and War

Notes

309 Notes Introduction 1. Di Cosmo uses a “nonbipolar approach” in studying China’s economic relations with its nomadic neighbors in ancient times. See his “Ancient Inner Asian Nomads,” p. 1095. I have discussed the multi-polar international system in Asia in Wang Zhenping, Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals, pp. 226–228. For discussion of multi-polarity in medieval Eastern Eurasian politics, see Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors, pp. 280–283. 2. Modern scholars use “contractual allegiances” to describe such political loyalty, which was “conditional on both parties fulfilling obligations.” And “the parties involved had a great deal of latitude in judging whether the other was upholding commitments.” See Skaff, “Survival in the Frontier Zone,” p. 134; Peterson, “P’u-ku Huai-en and the Tang Court,” p. 445. 3. Twitchett noted: “The Tang system of ‘tributary relationships’...rested largely on the voluntary participation of neighboring peoples intent on pursuing their own economic interests with a vastly wealthier society.” See his “Tibet in Tang’s Grand Strategy,” p. 147. 4. Barnes cautions that developments in East Asian countries could happen independently. They were not always interlinked and were not the result of a unidirectional spread of high culture from China. See her China, Korea and Japan, p. 8. The Khitan and the Xi in Northeast Asia during the Tang are cases in point. Tombs unearthed in modern Liaoning province, where the two nomadic groups were active, show that from the early Tang to about 704, burial practices were influenced by both local and Chinese culture. Later on, however, the number of Chinese-style tombs in the region gradually decreased; and such tombs disappeared after the 750s. These changes indicate a steady growth of the power and the cultural influence of the local non-Chinese groups. They also attest to the decline of Tang influence in southern Manchuria. See Xin Yan, “Liaoxi Chaoyang Tangmu de chubu yanjiu,” pp. 385–386. 5. This phenomenon had already occurred during the Han dynasty. See Di Cosmo, “Ancient Inner Asian Nomads,” pp. 1094–1095, 1116. 6. Twitchett, “Sui and Tang China and the Wider World,” pp. 33, 37. See also his “Tibet in Tang’s Grand Strategy,” pp. 145–146. 7. Chen Yinke, Tangdai zhengzhi shi shulun gao, p. 129. 8. Nye defines soft power in modern diplomacy as the ability to get “the 310 | Notes to Pages 5–6 outcome you want without tangible threats or payoffs. This power co-opts people rather than coerces them....In behavioral terms, soft power is attractive power.” See his Soft Power, pp. 5–7, 44, and 111. But I argue that soft power in premodern diplomacy was effective only when it was associated with tangible payoffs and benefits. 9. Morgenthau calls this policy “cultural imperialism,” which “aims at the conquest and control of the minds of men as an instrument for changing the power relations between two states.” This policy was not always successful, however . Spain’s cultural penetration into Latin America, for example, had no imperialistic significance in political terms because Spain was unable to use its military force to change the power relations in Latin America in its own favor. See Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, pp. 75, 82. In many ways, Tang’s cultural penetration into other Asian countries resembles Spain’s experience in Latin America. 10. In the eighth century, for example, the Uighur rulers built as their residence a large city with twelve huge iron gates. A Uighur document dated from the late 750s describes two Uighur cities. See Sinor, Geng Shimin, and Kychanov , “The Uighurs, the Kyrgyz and the Tangut (Eighth to the Thirteenth Centuries ),” pp. 192–193. See also Minorsky, “Tamīm ibn Baḥr’s Journey to the Uyghurs,” p. 283. Chinese primary sources trace city building among the Uighurs to much earlier times. See Xiao Zixian, Nan Qi shu, 59, p. 1026; ZZTJ, 211, p. 6722; 226, p. 7282. For city building in premodern Mongolia and Inner Mongolia , see Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies, p. 251. 11. Kawamoto Yoshiaki, “Goko ni okeru Chūka ishiki no keisei to be no sei no denpa,” pp. 4–7, and his “Goko jūrokukoku Hokuchō ki ni okeru Ko Han yūgō to Kai kan,” pp. 1–24. Later on, the Uighurs also developed similar ideas concerning centrality. Their ruler believed that his power came from “Heaven,” “The God of the Moon,” or “The God of the Sun,” and he “claimed universal sovereignty over all...