The people of Chenla also are Khmer.

Once they establish control over Funan, they embark on a course of conquest that will continue for three centuries.

They subjugate central and upper Laos, annex portions of the Mekong Delta, and bring what are now western Cambodia and southern Thailand under their direct control.

While the Ly family retreats to the mountains and attempts to rule in the style of their Chinese overlords, a rebel leader who bases his rule on an indigenous form of kingship arises in the Red River Delta.

Trieu Quang Phuc makes his headquarters on an island in a vast swamp.

From this refuge, he can strike without warning, seizing supplies from the Liang army and then slipping back into the labyrinthine channels of the swamp.

Despite the initial success of such guerrilla tactics, by which he gains control over the Red River Delta, Trieu Quang Phuc is defeated by 570.

According to a much later Vietnamese revolutionary, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese concepts of protracted warfare were born in the surprise offensives, night attacks, and hit-and-run tactics employed by Trieu Quang Phuc.

The sixth century is an important stage in the Vietnamese political evolution toward independence.

During this period, the Vietnamese aristocracy becomes increasingly independent of Chinese authority, while retaining Chinese political and cultural forms.

At the same time, indigenous leaders arise who claim power based on Vietnamese traditions of kingship.

A series of failed revolts in the late sixth and early seventh centuries increases the Vietnamese national consciousness.

Ly Bi, the leader of a successful revolt in 543 against the Liang dynasty (502-556), is himself descended from a Chinese family that had fled to the Red River Delta during a period of dynastic turbulence in the first century CE.

Ly Bi declares himself emperor of Nam Viet in the tradition of Trieu Da and organizes an imperial court at Long Bien (vicinity of Hanoi).

Ly Bi is killed in 547, but his followers keep the revolt alive for another fifty years, establishing what is sometimes referred to in Vietnamese history as the Earlier Ly dynasty.

Funan had reached its zenith in the fifth century CE.

Beginning in the early sixth century, civil wars and dynastic strife undermine Funan's stability, making it relatively easy prey to incursions by hostile neighbors.

By the end of the seventh century, a northern neighbor, the kingdom of Chenla, has reduced Funan to a vassal state.

The new Buddhist religion had swept through India, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia, but will eventually plant its firmest roots in China and in Japan.

China is reunified in 589 by the short-lived Sui dynasty (581-617), which has often been compared to the earlier Qin dynasty in tenure and the ruthlessness of its accomplishments.

The Sui dynasty's early demise is attributed to the government's tyrannical demands on the people, who bear the crushing burden of taxes and compulsory labor.

These resources are overstrained in the completion of the Grand Canal—a monumental engineering feat—and in the undertaking of other construction projects, including the reconstruction of the Great Wall.

Weakened by costly and disastrous military campaigns against Korea in the early seventh century, the dynasty disintegrates through a combination of popular revolts, disloyalty, and assassination.

Silla is weaker militarily than Goguryeo, and seeks to fend off its rival through an alliance with Baekje.

By the beginning of the fifth century, Goguryeo had achieved undisputed control of all of Manchuria east of the Liao River as well as the northern and central regions of the Korean Peninsula.

At this time, Goguryeo had a famous leader appropriately named King Gwanggaeto (r. 391-412), whose name translates as "wide open land."

Reigning from the age of eighteen, he had conquered sixty-five walled towns and fourteen hundred villages, in addition to assisting Silla when the Wa forces from Japan attacked, but as Goguryeo's domain increases, it confronts China's Sui Dynasty (589-618) in the west and Silla and Baekje to the south.

Silla attacks Goguryeo in 551 in concert with King Song (r. 523-54) of Baekje.

After conquering the upper reaches of the Han River, Silla now turns on Baekje forces and drives them out of the lower Han area.

While a tattered Baekje kingdom nurses its wounds in the southwest, Silla allies with Chinese forces of the Sui and the successor Tang (618-906) dynasties in combined attacks against Goguryeo.

The Sui emperor, Yang Di, launches an invasion of Goguryeo in 612, marshaling more than one million soldiers, only to be lured into a trap by the revered Goguryeo commander, Eulji Mundeok, who destroys the Sui forces.

Perhaps as few as three thousand Sui soldiers survive their eclipse, thus contributing to the fall of the dynasty in 618.

Tang emperor Taizong launches another huge invasion in 645, but Goguryeo forces win another striking victory in the siege of the Ansisong (An Si Fortress), forcing him to withdraw.

More exchange occurs between Japan and Asian mainland late in the Kofun period.

Buddhism is introduced from Korea, probably in CE 538, exposing Japan to a new body of religious doctrine.

The Soga, a Japanese court family that has risen to prominence with the accession of the Emperor Kimmei about 531, favor the adoption of Buddhism and of governmental and cultural models based on Chinese Confucianism, but some at the Yamato court—such as the Nakatomi family, which is responsible for performing Shinto rituals at court, and the Mononobe, a military clan—are set on maintaining their prerogatives and resist the alien religious influence of Buddhism.

The Soga introduce Chinese-modeled fiscal policies, establish the first national treasury, and consider the Korean Peninsula a trade route rather than an object of territorial expansion.

Acrimony continues between the Soga and the Nakatomi and Mononobe clans for more than a century during which the Soga temporarily emerge ascendant.

The Yamato court, which had been concentrated in Asuka, near modern Nara, by the fifth century, exercises power over clans in Kyushu and Honshu, bestowing titles, some hereditary, on clan chieftains.

The Yamato name becomes synonymous with all of Japan as the Yamato rulers suppress the clans and acquire agricultural lands.

Based on Chinese models (including the adoption of the Chinese written language), they develop a central administration and an imperial court attended by subordinate clan chieftains but with no permanent capital.

By the mid-seventh century, the agricultural lands have grown to a substantial public domain, subject to central policy.

The basic administrative unit is the county, and society is organized into occupation groups.

Most people are farmers; other are fishers, weavers, potters, artisans, armorers, and ritual specialists.