Abstract: For the most part，it was official agents and diplomatic envoys who brought Chinese books into
Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty． The commercial trade in books was not prosperous，as was the case
with Sino-Korean trade，but different from that of the Sino-Japanese exchange． The lack of trade in books
was due to two factors． First，the fact that the trade was connected to the systematic tribute to China
suppressed the enthusiasm of independent merchants． Second，the commercial cost was too high because
the source of imports from China was Guangdong，which was far from the center of book production and
trade—the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze Ｒiver． Because reprinting Chinese book in Vietnam
was not common practice，the dependence on government procurement and envoys purchases produced
two results: there were less books in Vietnam in comparison with Korea and Japan，and a seriously
uneven distribution of the books，the royal family received the most books，followed by the diplomats，but
the ordinary people had little chance to get books． The lack of books influenced literacy level of
Vietnamese scholars and promoted Vietnamese government to distribute books to common students and
scholars．