China

China’s engagement with the Malay Peninsula and Borneo spans more than two millennia, from the earliest documented sea routes reaching the Indian Ocean in the first century A.D. to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Malaysia in 1974. This engagement has taken the form of maritime trade in luxury goods and later bulk commodities, imperial projection through the Ming dynasty’s southern expansion, the cultivation of tributary and commercial networks linking Chinese ports to the Straits of Malacca and the Java Sea, and the sustained presence of Chinese merchant communities whose remittances, banking institutions, and association networks shaped the economic architecture of the region well into the twentieth century [1, pp. 95–97], [2, pp. 1–2].

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest definitive evidence of a Chinese sea trade reaching the Indian Ocean is a passage in the Han Shu (c. A.D. 80) describing the route from Hsu-wen and Ho-p’u to Huang-chih (Kanci, South India), with the initial impetus being the demand for large pearls superior to local products [2, pp. 19–21]. Wang Gungwu’s comprehensive study of the “Nanhai trade” reconstructs eleven centuries of this commerce from the Ch’in conquest of the Yueh territories in 221 B.C. to the founding of the Sung dynasty in 960 A.D., arguing that the trade was structurally limited by its dependence on luxury goods, the passive role of Chinese merchants, and the dominance of foreign middlemen—Yueh, Indian, Persian, and Arab—who carried the bulk of the sea transport [2, pp. 1–2]. Gungwu identifies three distinct phases: a trade in precious things desired by courts and palaces (to the end of the Chin dynasty, 420 A.D.); a trade in “holy things” driven by Buddhist devotion during the Southern Dynasties (420–589); and a trade in drugs and spices during the T’ang and Five Dynasties (618–960), characterised by the commercial power of Srivijaya and the eventual domination of Persian and Arab middlemen [2, pp. 113–114].

The effectiveness of Chinese control over the coastal commanderies was the single most important variable determining the volume of trade. When central authority weakened, as after the An Lu-shan rebellion (755–763) or during the Huang Ch’ao revolt (878–884), the trade collapsed; when order was restored, tribute missions and merchant traffic quickly resumed [2, pp. 80–86]. The establishment of the shih-p’o-shih (Superintendent of the Shipping Trade) before 714 represented the imperial government’s recognition of the trade’s revenue potential and its need for specialised port administration [2, pp. 100–103]. By the late eighth century, the extended Tahai (Indian Ocean) trade had gained on the Nanhai trade proper, as confirmed by Chia Tan’s route description (c. 800) from Canton to the Persian Gulf, passing through Champa, the Straits of Malacca, Sumatra, and the Nicobar Islands [2, pp. 104–105].

Commerce with Southeast Asia

The Sung period marked a decisive shift. After the fall of K’ai-feng in 1127 and the closing of the overland caravan routes, all tribute with trade that came to China came by sea, and the Sung government began to integrate the sea into China’s defence strategy, building a navy that became the foundation for later Mongol and Ming naval expeditions [8, p. 22, n. 12]. Chinese merchants boarded Malay ships and traded in the Southern Seas before the appearance of Chinese junks in the region [8, p. 22, n. 12]. A 1178 Chinese source ranks the wealthy foreign lands as: Ta-shih (the Arabs) first, She-p’o (Java) second, San-fo-chi (Srivijaya) third, marking the decline of Srivijaya’s commercial pre-eminence [3, p. 21].

The Ming maritime expeditions commanded by the eunuch Zheng He represent the most dramatic assertion of Chinese power in the region. Geoff Wade’s reassessment argues that these voyages were not the “friendly diplomatic activities” of popular Chinese memory but rather an aggressive form of maritime proto-colonialism designed to impose a pax Ming across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean through military coercion and the control of strategic ports and trade routes [4, pp. 37–39]. The fleets carried in excess of 20,000 military personnel; in one documented case, 26,800 of 27,400 personnel aboard were rank-and-file troops, irregulars, crack troops, sailors, and clerks [4, p. 45]. Wade documents specific acts of violence and coercion: the attack on Old Port in Sumatra (1407), the killing of 170 Chinese troops in Java and the subsequent demand for 60,000 liang of gold in compensation, the threat of a combined sea-and-land attack on Ava-Burma (1409), the invasion of Sri Lanka and capture of its king (1411), and the capture of Su-gan-la from Samudera (1415) [4, pp. 47–51]. The Wu-bei-zhi maps show the establishment of military garrison-cum-treasury depots at Melaka and Samudera, confirming the strategic intent to control the Straits of Malacca [4, p. 47].

Samudra-Pasai emerged as the most prominent port on the Sumatra coast during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its relationship with China was mediated through Java. Ma Huan, accompanying Zheng He on his expeditions, describes Samudra as a commercial centre where “there are foreign ships going and coming in large numbers, hence all kinds of foreign goods are sold in great quantities in this country,” yet he recognises no Chinese trade at Samudra, as opposed to “foreign” trade [3, pp. 35–36]. Samudra sent annual tribute missions to the Ming court from 1405 to 1424, ceasing when the Ming abandoned its closely supervised tributary policy in the Nan-yang (Southern Seas) [3, p. 31]. The foundation of Malacca in the early fifteenth century shifted the Javanese spice trade from Pasai to Malacca, and the Ming initially supported Malacca’s establishment as an international entrepôt before withdrawing from active participation in Southeast Asian affairs in the second quarter of the fifteenth century [3, pp. 36].

The postwar period saw a transformation in the character of Sino-Malayan trade. Nie Dening’s study demonstrates that total trade between China and British Malaya grew more than forty-fivefold between 1868 and 1926, from 923,000 HK taels to 41.4 million HK taels [1, p. 96]. The trade was asymmetric: China exported textiles, dried vegetables, peanut oil, tea, and medicinal products to a Chinese population exceeding 1.7 million by 1931, while importing rubber, tin, copra, and gasoline [1, pp. 95–97]. Overseas Chinese remittances from Singapore and Malaya reached an estimated 67.5 million dollars by the end of the 1930s, constituting around 10 per cent of China’s total international revenue at that time [1, p. 110]. The US-imposed rubber embargo of 1951–56 and the Malayan anti-dumping measures of 1958 forced trade into indirect channels through Hong Kong and Singapore, where the Bank of China’s branches and Chinese trading firms acted as intermediaries [1, pp. 98–100]. The turning point came in 1971, when Malaysia’s new non-aligned foreign policy and China’s admission to the United Nations created the political conditions for direct trade delegations and ultimately diplomatic relations in 1974 [1, pp. 108–112].

External Relations and Diplomatic Framework

The Ming court’s response to the Portuguese conquest of Melaka in 1511 reveals the depth of Sino-Melakan tributary relations. Cheah Boon Kheng demonstrates that the Ming Shi Lu records the Ministry of War proposing, on 31 August 1521, that “Imperial orders of castigation be sent to the Fo-lang-ji, instructing them to return Melaka’s territory,” and that Siam and other vassals be instructed to assist the Sultan; the Emperor approved all proposals [5, pp. 68–69]. On 23 September 1523, twenty-three Portuguese prisoners were dismembered in the streets of Canton as a deterrent against further incursions [5, p. 68]. The Malay envoy, identified as Tuan Nasim Mundeliar, an uncle of the Sultan, stayed in China for three years awaiting military assistance; he died of apoplexy while preparations were reportedly under way, and was buried at Sampitay near Nanking with a tomb inscription reading “Here lies Trannocem Mudeliar, uncle to the king of Malaca, whom death took out of the world before he could be avenged of Captain Afonso Albuquerque, the lion of the robbers of the sea” [5, pp. 60–62]. Following the 1523 executions, the Portuguese were effectively banned from China for approximately 20 years [5, pp. 70–71].

The diplomatic and ceremonial context of Ming-Southeast Asian relations is further illustrated by the visit of the Bruneian king who died in Nanking in 1408. Tun Mohamed Suffian’s first-hand account of the tomb, located on Stone Hill some 22 km south-southwest of Nanking, records that the king, identified in Chinese records as “Manaregarna,” arrived by sea in Fukian Province in August 1408 with a retinue exceeding 150 persons, and was received with extraordinary ceremony by Emperor Yongle, who hosted banquets in the Imperial Palace [6, pp. 2–3]. The Emperor awarded the deceased king the posthumous title “Gonshun King,” the same title reserved for a Chinese king who had passed away, and ordered three days of mourning with a memorial ceremony attended by high-ranking officials [6, pp. 3–4].

The opening of formal relations between China and Malacca in 1403–05 has been the subject of historiographical debate. Syed Naguib al-Attas challenged Wang Gungwu’s identification of the Muslim traders who brought Malacca to the attention of the Ming Emperor Yung-lo as south Indian (Malabar) merchants, arguing instead that they were Persians from the province of Jilan (Gilān) on the Caspian Sea [7, pp. 260–264]. Al-Attas demonstrates that both Chinese renderings of the leader’s name—“Haji Ma-ha-mo Ch’i-ni” and “Ch’i-la-ni”—are correct transliterations of Jili and Jilani respectively, referring to the Persian province of Jilan [7, p. 264]. The imperial instruction to “give them the credentials to ensure that the officials on their way will not obstruct them” indicates an overland route through China, consistent with a Persian origin but implausible for Malabar traders [7, p. 264].

The Peranakan community in the Straits Settlements occupied a distinctive position within this diplomatic and commercial framework. Liu and Sim’s re-examination of the 1888–1889 travelogue of Li Qinghui, a Hokkien Peranakan born in Melaka, demonstrates how a single family’s movements exemplified the broader dynamics of treaty-port commerce, where colonial powers controlled nodal points while diaspora Chinese merchants lubricated the flows of capital and commodities between them [8, pp. 33–36]. The Li family navigated multiple, overlapping affiliations: as a traditional Chinese family bound by surname and succession; as a Creole, mixed-linguistic group comfortable in English, Hokkien, Han Chinese, and Malay; as business actors operating as compradors and financiers; and as political affiliates simultaneously aligned with the Qing government (through rank-purchasing and consular appointments) and the British colonial administration [8, pp. 46–51]. Li Qingyuan was conferred a second rank in the Qing official hierarchy and a Justice of the Peace title by British colonial authorities, illustrating the family’s dual political affiliations [8, p. 47].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on China and its relations with the Malay world reveals a clear evolution in scholarly priorities. The earliest substantial contribution, Wang Gungwu’s 1958 study of the Nanhai trade, was completed at the University of Malaya and published with the encouragement of Dr. C. Gibson-Hill; it represents early post-war Malayan historiography engaging with Chinese primary sources to reconstruct regional maritime history from a non-Western perspective [2, p. 2]. Gungwu’s work drew on the full range of dynastic histories alongside Western scholarship by Pelliot, Ferrand, Hirth and Rockhill, Coedes, Briggs, and Hourani [2, pp. 132–135].

The 1960s and 1970s saw a shift toward the Ming period and its immediate consequences. Hsu Yun-ts’iao’s 1976 article addressed seven persistent questions surrounding Zheng He’s expeditions, drawing on Ming dynasty official histories, stone inscriptions, and a previously unpublished handwritten manuscript [9, pp. 134–140]. Hall’s 1981 article on trade and statecraft in the western archipelago synthesised Chinese dynastic records, Arab travel accounts, Portuguese sources, and Malay court chronicles within Bronson’s theoretical framework for riverine political systems [3, pp. 21–47]. The 1999 article by Nie Dening, a scholar at Xiamen University, marked the first substantial treatment of modern Sino-Malayan trade in the Society’s pages, integrating the remittance and banking dimensions into the trade narrative [1, pp. 95–112].

The 2000s and 2010s witnessed a methodological diversification. Wade’s 2005 reassessment of the Zheng He voyages intervened at the moment of the 600th anniversary, challenging both the Chinese nationalist “friendship” narrative and the Western tendency to treat the voyages as precursors to European expansion [4, pp. 37–58]. Rivers’ 2012 article corrected widespread anachronisms in the nautical vocabulary used to describe early fifteenth-century navigation, occupying a middle ground between popular sensationalism and academic overstatement [10, pp. 85–98]. Cheah Boon Kheng’s 2012 article corrected the historiographical error, repeated by Edward Dreyer and others, that Ming foreign relations with Southeast Asia ceased after 1433, citing continuous Ming Shi Lu entries documenting tribute missions well into the sixteenth century [5, pp. 55–77]. Akhtar’s 2022 article extended the method of treating Malay literary texts as evidence for political and economic history beyond the well-studied Sejarah Melayu to include the less-examined Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai and Hikayat Hang Tuah, situating them within the broader context of Ming maritime statecraft [11, pp. 1–21].

A persistent historiographical tension runs through this literature: the degree to which Chinese engagement with the region should be characterised as commercial, diplomatic, or imperial. Gungwu’s emphasis on the structural limitations of the Nanhai trade [2, pp. 113–117] contrasts with Wade’s argument for “maritime proto-colonialism” [4, pp. 52–55], while Hall’s analysis of the commercial dynamics driving state formation in the Straits region [3, pp. 45–47] and Cheah’s demonstration of sustained Ming diplomatic commitment to Melakan sovereignty [5, pp. 68–69] each offer distinct interpretive frameworks. The most recent scholarship, particularly Liu and Sim’s application of Gipouloux’s “Asian Mediterranean” concept to a specific Peranakan family case [8, pp. 33–36] and Akhtar’s recovery of the Malay perspective on Chinese patronage [11, pp. 1–21], signals a move toward integrating micro-level network analysis with macro-level structural interpretation.

Description and travel

Commerce with Southeast Asia

External relations with Southeast Asia

MBRAS Sources

References

N. Dening (1999). Changes in the trading ties between China and Malaya, prewar to postwar, JMBRAS 72(1): 95–112.
Wang Gungwu (1958). The Nanhai trade: a study of the early history of Chinese trade in the South China Sea JMBRAS 31(2): 1–135.
Hall K.R (1981). Trade and statecraft in the western archipelago at the dawn of the European age JMBRAS 54(1): 21–47. Read on JSTOR
Geoff Wade (2005). The Zheng He voyages: a reassessment JMBRAS 78(1): 37–58.
Cheah Boon Kheng (2012). Ming China’s support for Sultan Mahmud of Melaka and its hostility towards the Portuguese after the fall of Melaka in 1511 JMBRAS 85(2): 55–77. Read on JSTOR
Mohamed Suffian (1983). Tomb of “The King of Brunei” in Nanking JMBRAS 56(2): 1–6.
Naguib, Syed Al-Attas (1965). Note on the opening of relations between China and Malacca, 1403–05 JMBRAS 38(1): 260–264.
S.J.C. Liu and T.Y.H. Sim (2015). A Peranakan family between Singapore and Shanghai: business-making, networks and identity, 1870s‒1910s JMBRAS 88(1): 33–57. Read on JSTOR
Hsu Yun-ts’iao (1976). Notes relating to Admiral Cheng Ho’s expeditions. Il JMBRAS 49(1): 134–140. Read on JSTOR
P.J. Rivers (2012). New lamps for old: modern nautical terms for ancient marine practices and the navigation of the Zheng He voyages JMBRAS 85(1): 85–98. Read on JSTOR
A.H. Akhtar (2022). Malay Perspectives on Ming China during the Age of Exploration JMBRAS 95(2): 1–21.