Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wikipedia
A client state is a state that is economically, politically, or militarily subordinate to another more powerful state in international affairs. Types of client states include: satellite state, associated state, puppet state, neo-colony, protectorate, vassal state, and tributary state.
Usage examples of "client state".
As entertaining as it might be for the Americans to rescue their people with this boxwood green operation, as much as it might show the Vietnamese again that they should cooperate more closely with the Soviet Union, that they really were a client state, it would also mean that the knowledge locked in those American minds would be lost to his country, and it was knowledge they must have.
They all are rabid supporters of Righ Conan, Your Grace, most are not of Ulaid at all, but out of Ui Neill lands, across the River Ban, and they would see all of our Ulaid as naught but a humble, exploited client state of the Ui Neills.
He considers Airgialla to be his client state, and Your Majesty may be assured that he will respond quickly and awesomely to this gauntlet Your Majesty has here hurled down.
He's not in a mood to be defied, and for better or worse, you're a client state.
True enough, he was getting most of the stone free from quarries in his client state of Airgialla, to the south, but it still had to be either hauled by land or barged in good weather up to the building sites, then manhandled into place and finished, and all of these tasks took men from the land or the sea who might otherwise be laboring to produce food of various sorts for feeding his people or producing income for the kingdom, said realm still a long way from being recovered from the rebellion which had led to the overthrow of the previous usurping renegade who had for so .