The medal, decreed by a law of 6 September 1885, was minted at the Monnaie de Paris and distributed shortly before the Bastille Day parade on 14 July 1886 to around 65,000 soldiers and sailors.

On one side it shall bear the effigy of the Republic, with the words République française, and on the other the legend Tonkin, Chine, Annam and in an inscription the names of the most glorious feats of arms.

The medal shall be bestowed by the President of the Republic on all the soldiers and sailors who took part in the Tonkin expedition and the military operations directed against China and Annam in 1883, 1884 and 1885, on the recommendation of the ministry responsible for their respective corps or service.

[1] As stipulated in the law of 6 September 1885, the obverse of the medal features an effigy of the Republic and the words République française, enclosed within a laurel wreath.

Administrative and support staff, including cantinières and officials working in the treasury, postal and military telegraphy services, were eligible for the award of the medal.

[5] A law of 27 July 1887 extended the medal's distribution to servicemen who had taken part in various expeditions in Indochina since the end of the Sino-French War and to those who had fought in Tonkin under Francis Garnier in 1873 and in the early campaigns of Henri Rivière in 1882.

The medal was eventually issued to all servicemen who had campaigned between 1885 and 1893 in Tonkin, Annam, Cambodia, Siam and the Upper Mekong, bringing the total number of recipients to 97,300.

The government included this engagement as a tribute to the two pre-eminent martyrs of the French conquest of Tonkin, Henri Rivière and Francis Garnier.

The battlefield of Cau-Giaï, where Rivière fell on 19 May 1883, was also the scene of the defeat and death of Francis Garnier ten years earlier, on 21 December 1873.

It is a manifestation of that absurd species of egalitarianism which insists on cutting down the great to the same level as the small and rewarding equally those who exceeded their duty and those who shirked it.