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Vietnam Renewed Chinese Influence
The Ming administered the country as if it were a province of
China and ruled it harshly for the next twenty years. The forced
labor of its people was used to exploit Vietnam's mines and
forests solely for China's enrichment. Taxes were levied on all
products including salt a dietary staple. Under the Ming,
Vietnamese cultural traditions, including the chewing of betel
nut, were forbiddeb, men were required to wear their hair long
and women to dress in the Chinese style. Vietnamese Buddhism was
replaced at court by Ming-sponsored neo-Confucianism, but Ming
attempts to supplant popular Vietnamese religious traditions with
an officially sponsored form of Buddhism were less successful.
The Chinese impact on Vietnamese culture was probably as
great, or greater, in the centuries following independence as it
was during the 1,000 years of Chinese political domination. Much
of China's cultural and governmental influence on Vietnam dates
from the Ming period. Other aspects of Chinese culture were
introduced later by Vietnamese kings struggling to bring a
Confucian order to their unruly kingdom. Chinese administrative
reforms and traditions, when sponsored by Vietnamese kings and
aristocracy, tended to be more palatable and hence more readily
assimilated than those imposed by Chinese officials. Although the
Vietnamese upper classes during the Ming period studied Chinese
classical literature and subscribed to the Chinese patriarchal
family system, the majority of the Vietnamese people recognized
these aspects of Chinese culture mainly as ideals. Less exposed
to Chinese influence, the peasantry retained the Vietnamese
language and many cultural traditions that predated Chinese rule.
Other factors also encouraged the preservation of Vietnamese
culture during the periods of Chinese rule. Contact with the
Indianized Cham and Khmer civilizations, for example, widened the
Vietnamese perspective and served as a counterweight to Chinese
influence. Vietnam's location on the South China Sea and the
comings and goings of merchants and Buddhists encouraged contact
with other cultures of South and Southeast Asia. China, itself,
once it developed the port of Guangzhou (Canton), had less need
to control Vietnam politically in order to control the South
China Sea. Moreover, the Vietnamese who moved southward into
lands formerly occupied by the Cham and the Khmer became less
concerned about the threat from China.
Data as of December 1987
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