In early
Ancient China, the various
self-ruling regional
polities (some being merely
tribal city-states) often align under the
sphere of influence of a
confederacy, of which the largest, most powerful state typically became the
de jure dynastic leader. During the era of the mythical
Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors dynastic and the subsequent
theocratic Xia and
Shang dynasties, such a suzerain state would assume the "divine blessings" of
Mandate of Heaven and became known as an
overlord (), who claimed superiority over numerous
submitted but
autonomous states known as
fangguo ( lit. 'regional/local state'). During the
Zhou dynasty, most of the
states were not indigenously established, but rather were
aristocrat polities appointed by the ruling
Ji royal family via
enfeoffment (
cè fēng lit. '
decreed
investiture') to
extended relatives and loyal allies who contributed to the
overthrow of the Shang dynasty. Although China then was largely a
federacy where the ruling Zhou kings only had limited sovereignty over the affairs of their vassal states, the term "
Son of Heaven" (
tiān zǐ) has since become the title of all
Chinese sovereigns of the subsequent dynasties until the
Xinhai Revolution in 1912, with
Classic of Poetry even claiming the king's suzerainty over
all lands under Heaven: The
unification of China under the
Qin dynasty in
221 BC started the two millennia-long
Imperial era of Chinese history, and the
Emperor became the supreme leader of a
unitary China. Although the Qin dynasty was short-lived and fell to remnant rebels of the states it once conquered soon after the death of the
First Emperor, the subsequent
Han dynasty (whose founding emperor
Liu Bang and chancellors
Xiao He and
Cao Shen were all former
civil servants of the Qin bureaucracy) inherited Qin's concept of
Chinese uniformity and, through diplomatic
power projections and
trade routes such as the
Silk Road and
Tea Horse Road, became a prosperous
empire with international influence far beyond the boundaries of
China proper. The prominence of the Han empire, especially after defeating the
Xiongnu Empire,
Dayuan and
Wiman Gojoseon, had led to
fealty and
tributes from numerous states in the surrounding
Central Asia (then known as the
Western Regions),
Northeast Asia (mainly
Buyeo and the
Jin Koreans) and
Southeast Asia (pre-
Jiande Nanyue and early
Funan), to whom the Chinese emperors granted titles of
kingship, as evidenced by
King of Na gold seal of
Yayoi period Japan (then known as
Wa) and the similar gold seal of
Dian. Similarly, the dominance of the early
Tang dynasty, especially after its annihilation of the
Eastern Turkic Khaganate in
630 AD and
Xueyantuo in
646 AD, earned
Emperor Taizong the nickname of
Khan of Heaven (
tiān kěhán) by various
Göktürk nomads of
Inner Asia subdued during his reign. The tributary or
Chaogong () system under the Chinese
sphere of influence (particularly within the
Sinosphere) was a loose network of international and trade relations focused on China's prestige as the undisputed
regional power in
East Asia, and other states in the surrounding Central, Northeast, Southeast and
South Asian regions also facilitated their trade and foreign relations by acknowledging China's primacy role in the
Far East. It involved multiple relationships of trade, military force, diplomacy and ritual. The other states had to send a tributary envoy to China on schedule, who would
kowtow to the Chinese emperors as a form of submission and acknowledgement of Chinese supremacy and precedence, and the Chinese emperors often granted gifts, wealth, blessings and favorable policy promises in return. The other countries followed China's formal ritual in order to keep the peace with the more powerful neighbor and be eligible for diplomatic or military help under certain conditions. Political actors within the tributary system were largely autonomous and in almost all cases virtually independent. The term "tribute system" as applied to China is a 20th-century Western invention. There was no equivalent term in the Chinese lexicon to describe what would be considered the "tribute system" today, nor was it envisioned as an institution or system. John King Fairbank and
Teng Ssu-yu created the "tribute system" theory in a series of articles in the early 1940s to describe "a set of ideas and practices developed and perpetuated by the rulers of China over many centuries." The Fairbank model presents the tribute system as an extension of the hierarchic and nonegalitarian Confucian social order. The more Confucian the actors, the more likely they were to participate in the tributary system. In practice the behaviors which were collectively seen as a tributary system, involving tribute and gift exchange in return for symbolic subordination, were only formalized during the early years of the
Ming dynasty due to
Zheng He's
treasure voyages. Tributary members were virtually autonomous and carried out their own agendas despite paying tribute; this was the case with Japan, Korea, Ryukyu, and Vietnam. Chinese influence on tributary states was almost always non-interventionist in nature and tributary states "normally could expect no military assistance from Chinese armies should they be invaded". The Chinese tributary system was upended in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of spreading
Western colonialism and the rise of
Imperial Japan after the
Meiji Restoration. Previously, the
Portuguese conquest of Malacca and
settlement of Macau, the
Spanish colonization of the Philippines and the
Dutch incursions to the Malay Archipelago had already eroded the Chinese prestige in the
Nanyang region (roughly present-day Southeast Asia as well as
New Guinea). During the late
Qing dynasty, the Chinese tributary system was gradually destroyed with
Britain annexing
Hong Kong,
Lower and
Upper Burma following the
Opium Wars and
Anglo-Burmese Wars; the
France conquering
Cambodia,
Laos and
Vietnam into
Indochina, and Japan annexing
Ryukyu Islands,
Taiwan and
Korea after the
Ryukyu Disposition and
First Sino-Japanese War. The downward spiral of the Qing dynasty over the second half of the 19th century also caused
mainland China to become semi-colonized, with many of its coastal regions turning into
foreign concessions that lasted through the
First and
Second World Wars. Most of the foreign colonies were returned to Chinese control before the
founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, with the last three concession territories being returned in
by the Soviets in 1952,
by the British in 1997 and
by the Portuguese in 1999. Since colonial times, Britain had regarded
Tibet as being under Chinese suzerainty, but in 2008 the British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband called that word an "anachronism" in a statement, and recognized Tibet as sovereign part of China. ==Ancient Israel and Near East==