'Tributary' from a Multilateral and Multilayered Perspective

Abstract

Dr. Zhou Fangyin’s ‘Equilibrium Analysis of the Tributary System’ enriches the increasingly salient debate among Chinese International Relations (IR) students on the so-called ‘tributary system’ 1 in three ways. First, it correctly points out that China did not unilaterally create the mode of interstate connections in pre-modern East Asia. Rather, the ‘system’, if there was indeed such a thing, was an institutional mechanism mutually constructed by both the central and peripheral regimes. This, in my opinion, is a crucial clarification that revises the views of some of the Fairbankian School of scholars, who insist that the tributary system was an institution enforced by China on surrounding states that only passively accepted it. 2 Second, the article differentiates between tributary discourse and practice, and emphasizes the system’s internal logic in practical policy making. In another words, by observing the tributary system as policy-oriented behaviour, the article rejects the explanation of it as a (partially self-deceived) cultural phenomenon, instead emphasizing its realist significance as a rational political arrangement. In so doing, it opens the way to further research on the topic along the political science line. Third, the article regards the traditional