Middle Kingdom and tributary states

I would like to comment on your Asia correspondent Mr. Harvey Stockwin's article published on Dec. 8, 1998, titled China, Japan drifting further apart, which refers to China as having a Middle Kingdom complex, leading it to treat other countries as tributary states.

On the Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo), John F. King Fairbank in his latest and last book China, a new history writes on the Middle Kingdom as follows: This custom of sharply distinguishing "inside" (nei) and "outside" (wai) went along with calling China the "central country" (zhongguo), which began by ruling the "central plain" (zhongyuan) in north China. So strong is this nomenclature in the classics that were composed under the Zhou dynasty that historians, East and West, have generally depicted ancient China of the three dynasties as a "culture island" surrounded by a sea of "barbarians" lacking in the civilized qualities of Chinese culture. (The three dynasties are: Xia (2200-1750 BC, from where the HuaXia civilization was known), Shang (1750-1040 BC) and Chou (1100-771, or western Chou (770- 256) or eastern Chou or spring-summer and warring states period).

On the tributary states, Mr. Fairbank writes in his book China that once China, during the Ming dynasty, listed 38 tributary states in its western region, but many were actually merchants representing nonexistent potentates, and among them the Kingdom of Rum in Asia Minor (the long defunct Roman East), and they were usually feasted as state guests and bestowed bigger gifts while China suffered their drunken roistering and other depredation along the routes.

On tributary states, Dr. Shozo Fukuda also writes: in -- with sweat and Abacus -- that the actual motives were economic, products of countries were brought from afar but China bestowed even more in return ... it was fundamentally different from the relationship in modern international law in which a sovereign, or suzerain state requires the actual right of protection over a subject state or protectorate. It was no more than the theoretical relation of subject state to a theoretical world empire (Dr. Yano Jinichi: Modern Chinese history, p. 129). In essence it rather amounted to interchange of goods.

China used the term Zhongguo -- meaning central country, but it was often translated by western historians as Middle Kingdom -- for its central location or central plain (Zhongyuan) 3,000 years ago for relations with China proper. And the so-called tributary states were, or could be interpreted as, the ritualized barter trade system by which China actually gave more goods in return and at times was cheated by such trade missions.

But please consider and think how the West (read European) thought and think of them as the "Middle Kingdom", with all their tributary states called dependent territories scattered around the world. India and Indonesia were named East India and the East Indies while eastern Caribbean countries were and are called the West Indies. Doesn't the expression infer that the Europeans are the center of the world, the center of civilization? Isn't the term "dependent territories" a modern paraphrase for tributaries with military conquest, economic exploitation and cultural subjugation?

Almost 100 years before Columbus and Vasco Da Gama set sail, the Muslim admiral of Hui nationality from the Ming dynasty, Zheng He, made seven epic diplomatic voyages between 1405 and 1433, with a force totaling 26,800 men in 317 vessels of which 62 were treasure ships (up to 440 feet in length and 150 to 180 feet abeam -- the Spanish armada of 1588 totaled 132 vessels) and reached the East African coast but never fought a war and never captured or enslaved a single person from the East African coast. But more than 20 million were captured from the West African coast to "West India" and were auctioned off, like animals, as slaves. More than a quarter of them perished.

So who has a Middle Kingdom complex with all the "tributary states"? And the Indian, Indonesian and eastern Caribbean states are not Europe proper. But consider these terms: Far East, Near East, and Middle East used by Europeans. East and West Asia would be more appropriate.

SIA KA MOU

Jakarta