The Diplomatic Missions to China

Most people, even many Vietnamese, think ancient relations between Vietnam and China were just 2,000 years of non-stop wars. But in reality, the peacetime diplomacy between us was fascinating, weird, and surprisingly lucrative. If you’ve heard of the "tributary system" (triều cống), you probably picture the smaller country begging for mercy and getting robbed of all its gold. But if you were a diplomat back then, your journey would look completely different.

Here is what your business trip to the Middle Kingdom would actually look like.

First of all, brace yourself for a two-year road trip. Unlike diplomats from Champa or the Khmer Empire who traveled comfortably by sea, you and your Korean colleagues had to hoof it by land. This wasn't a weekend trip; a round-trip mission routinely took up to two whole years. China had strict quotas on how many people you could bring and what gifts you had to carry.

Depending on the era, you’d be packing local luxuries like elephant tusks, rhino horns, pearls, tortoiseshells, and gold. Sometimes, the gift exchange involved some serious petty drama. After the legendary Vietnamese commander Lê Lợi utterly crushed the Ming army, the Ming Emperor was so salty about his defeated general Liễu Thăng that he demanded Vietnam send a 1:1 life-sized human statue made of solid gold as compensation. We actually did it just to keep the peace. They also demanded human talent. Fun fact: Nguyễn An, the chief architect who designed Beijing’s famous Forbidden City, was actually a Vietnamese youth sent to China during one of these tribute eras.

So, did Vietnam just get ripped off? Nope. This is where Eastern geopolitics gets hilarious, and it is the ultimate geopolitical flex of why China paid to be scammed. The Chinese Emperor didn't care about the actual economic value of your gold or rhino horns. What he craved was "Face" (Thể diện). He wanted to look like the undisputed ruler of the world. To get that validation, the Emperor would flex his wealth by giving back gifts that were worth double or triple what you brought. We’re talking massive amounts of high-end silks, fine ceramics, and raw silver. This tribute system was so profitable for the smaller countries that Korea and the Ryukyu Kingdom (modern-day Okinawa) kept trying to spam tribute missions just to cash in. Eventually, China had to pass a law limiting them to one visit every three years because they were draining the Emperor's treasury.

When you finally arrived at the imperial court, you would experience a very silent diplomacy. You wouldn't speak a word of Chinese. Instead, diplomats from Vietnam, Korea, and China communicated entirely through "Brush Talk" (Bút đàm). Because everyone used classical Chinese characters but pronounced them completely differently, diplomats would sit across from each other in absolute silence, furiously writing notes back and forth on paper.

Your job didn't end at the court either, as you had to hit your KPIs on the way home. On the return journey, Vietnamese diplomats were legally required to act as royal shoppers. You had to source rare medicines, books, and northern goods. The government set strict KPIs for this; if you returned without the goods, you could face severe punishment. Because of this, many diplomats spent an extra year just wandering around China doing business before heading home. So yeah, being a medieval diplomat was exhausting, but it was basically a high-stakes, highly profitable trading mission wrapped in imperial etiquette.

If you look closely, this ancient dynamic isn't too different from how modern diplomacy with Beijing works today. Even now, for smaller neighboring nations, negotiating with China isn't always about winning every single legal battle or forcing hard, fast rules on paper. Often, it's still about navigating the "Big Brother" psychology. As long as smaller nations give China the prestige it craves—letting them feel like the central, influential superpower in the room—Beijing is usually more than happy to hand out massive economic deals, infrastructure projects, and trade perks that far outweigh what they receive. Once the summit is over, the photo ops are done, and you head back home? They often don't really care what you do behind closed doors, as long as the public "Face" remains intact. It turns out, 2,000 years later, the geopolitical game remains the same: Manage the ego, secure the bag.

Historical sources if you want to dive deeper: Đại Việt Sử Ký Toàn Thư, Khâm Định Việt Sử Thông Giám Cương Mục, and An Nam Chí Lược.