Accomplishment, Subjugation, and Revolution

FL.What’s Next for Industrial China?

71. China’s Urban and Transportation Geography

72. Taiwan

73. Mongolia

China has been the dominant culture of East Asia since ancient times. Chinese technology, literature, culture, agriculture, and religion have diffused to the rest of Asia and then to much of the outer world. China had a succession of dynasties that steadily pushed China’s boundaries outward (with some setbacks) and manipulated the not-especially fertile land to be more and more productive. China was little interested in trade with the West, but China’s defeat in the Opium War by the British forced open its markets to western goods. Soon many other countries were seeking China’s riches and markets, and many secured colonial access to key port cities. The Chinese Revolution of 1911 deposed the Manchu dynasty. China was soon embroiled in a civil war, with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party fighting Mao Zedong’s Communists. Mao was triumphant, and in 1949 two million Nationalists fled mainland China to Taiwan.

China is the most populated country in the world with 1.3 billion residents. The vast majority of Chinese live in the eastern part of China, known as China Proper or Humid China. Humid China is comprised of North China, where the historical focus of Chinese civilization developed along the Huang He, and South China, which is warmer and more humid than the north, and historically sent crops to the north along the Grand Canal. China’s northeast, commonly known as Manchuria, is an important industrial area. Arid China comprises most of western China, and is home to many ethnic minority groups, including Muslims and Tibetans. Beijing has instituted a policy of relocating many ethnic Han Chinese into Arid China to bring these distant areas under firmer control.

Mao attempted various reforms in China to maintain political control over the country and to increase agricultural and industrial production. These reforms, including the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, were generally unsuccessful, and China did not begin to prosper economically until after Mao’s death and the gradual opening of China to the outside world under his successors. China has moved away from Soviet-style heavy industry and turned towards production of consumer goods, and the command economy gave way to a more free-market, profit-oriented one. China has greatly expanded and improved its transportation network, and has also instituted the construction of the vast Chang Jiang Water Transfer Project, a scheme to divert water to the thirsty north and to produce hydropower.

Most of China’s most important cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Special Economic Zones, lie along the eastern shores or have easy transportation links to it. China’s booming economy has largely bypassed interior sections, and many residents of the rural interior are flocking to the cities to find work. It is unlikely China’s phenomenal economic growth can last indefinitely, and China’s entrenched political system has changed far less than its economic ways have since the days of Mao.

Taiwan lies one-hundred miles off the southeastern coast of China. Populated by ethnic Chinese who migrated there centuries ago as well as the more recent Nationalist Party flight, Taiwan is considered a renegade province by mainland China. Taiwan is a democratic, economically successful island that is protected by the United States despite the official One China Policy of the U.S. To the north of China lies Mongolia, the first Asian nation to abandon Communism. It is a large, landlocked nation privatizing much of its industry and land, which threatens the many pastoral nomads residing in the country.

139. 
     Some of China’s innovations that spread to other regions include gunpowder, paper, the wheelbarrow, the magnetic compass, and the Chinese writing system. China was also notable for its influence on the cultures, languages, arts, institutions, sciences, and engineering of surrounding nations. [p. 363]
     

140. 
     China vigorously expanded throughout Asia during the Han Dynasty, when its armies conquered or received tribute from surrounding powers. China’s power waxed and waned over the centuries. It was conquered by the Mongols and the Manchus, though even under the Manchu Dynasty China controlled a greater land area than it does now. European ships began visiting China’s coast in the sixteenth century, and after the Opium War China was forced to open itself to British trade. Soon other European powers as well as the United States sought out Chinese riches, and foreign “treaty ports” were established along the Chinese coast. Japan and Russia took portions of China’s empire away, and Japan took over large areas of China during World War II. [pp. 364-365]
     

141. 
     China has been turbulent throughout much of the twentieth century. The last Chinese dynasty was overthrown in the Revolution of 1911, led by Sun Yat-sen. Afterward the country was largely ruled by warlords until Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party managed to restore order to most of the nation in the 1920s. The Nationalist Party was soon engaged in a civil war with Mao Zedong’s Communist Party; after years of fighting the Communists fled in the “Long March” from their stronghold in China’s southwestern hills to Yenan in the north. Japan invaded China in the 1930s, and the two rival parties in China both fought against the Japanese. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, China’s civil war resumed, and in 1949 the Communists under Mao won. Chiang Kai-shek and 2 million of his followers fled to Taiwan. Mao ruled China until his death in 1976. Mao promoted agricultural, industrial, and social reforms, many of which were scaled back or removed after his death. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, opened up China to the West for the first time in 30 years, liberalizing agriculture and, in the 1990s, allowing limited private enterprise; China’s economy began growing enormously. Political reforms were slow, though, and a 1989 pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square was violently quashed. [pp. 365, 373-374, 376-377]
     

142. 
     Humid China contains the vast majority of China’s population, including most of the ethnic Hans. Arid China is sparsely populated and is home to many ethnic minorities. Arid China is mountainous and mostly desert, and nomadic herding and a few hardy crops constitute most agriculture. Humid China is rainier and much more suitable for agriculture, especially wet rice production. Humid China can be subdivided into North and South China. North China’s Huang He river region is the historical focus of Chinese civilization, while South China’s core lies south of another important river, the Chang Jiang. China’s Northeast (often referred to as Manchuria) has very fertile soils and is productive for agriculture in the short growing season. Lightly settled until the early twentieth century, the Northeast is one of China’s most important manufacturing and industrial regions. [pp. 365-373]
     

143. 
     The Grand Canal, constructed during the Sui Dynasty, is the longest canal on Earth, over 1,000 miles in length. It was built mainly to ensure a steady supply of rice from southern China to the north, and to supply the south with wheat and coal from the north. The Great Wall, built in many stages from the third century B.C. to the fifteenth century, was designed to keep out invaders to the north. The wall was unsuccessful during the Ming Dynasty, when the Qing peoples to the north were able to penetrate into China. [pp. 368, 372]
     

144. 
     The commune movement began with the state taking control of private agricultural land, and merging those lands into communes comprising 20,000 people or more across up to 100 villages. These people shared residence, bathing, and dining facilities, and any money or property owned by the people became the property of the commune. These communes were the cornerstone of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, which attempted to rapidly increase China’s industrial output by establishing millions of small “backyard steel furnaces” on them. The Great Leap Forward was a failure for China, as too much labor was placed into steel production on the communes and not enough into agriculture, which resulted in a famine that killed up to 30 million Chinese. Mao also attempted to purge China of anyone who offended Communist Party leaders, such as urbanites and intellectuals, in the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. Millions of people suspected of putting personal matters such as learning, skills, and expertise above Maoist principles and goals were harassed or assassinated. Those who were most loyal to Mao and his goals were rewarded with lifetime jobs regardless of their competence. It was not until the late 1970s that reforms began undoing the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. [pp. 376, 381]
     

145. 
     China’s economic boom will eventually have to contend with several concerns, such as freedom of expression. China, along with only a few other countries in the world, attempts to censor the Internet. Given the exponential growth of e-commerce, China cannot seriously hope to grow its economy while it stifles use of the web. Perpetuating its so-called “socialist market economy,” which is similar to the “make work projects” during the Great Depression in the U.S., is an enormous drain, but the government argues that it improves infrastructure and reduces unemployment. Many economists fear that China’s phenomenal growth rate of at least 7 percent annually is not sustainable in the long run. Further threatening the boom is the apparent lack of concern to environmental costs, as well as a growing division between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in this historically egalitarian society. [pp. 379-380]
     

146. 
     China has a very strong economy today, ranking sixth in overall economic output. Since the 1990s, when China began allowing some private enterprise and then requiring state-run factories to operate at a profit, China’s economy has grown by 7 percent a year or more. There are questions about how long this trend can last, but at the moment China is accepting huge amounts of foreign investment and seeks to be a global trading power. While China is still largely agricultural and has a GDP-PPP of only $7,730, it is rapidly urbanizing, constructing transportation links nationwide, and undertaking other massive projects such as the Water Transfer Project. China used to have one of the most equitable distributions of wealth, but now less than 10 percent of the population control 45 percent of the wealth, and 17 percent of the Chinese population survive on less than $1.00 a day. China’s expanding economy and wealth is concentrated along the coast, and has largely bypassed most of Arid China, as well as portions of Humid China that are rural, inland, or lacking in reliable transportation. China is hoping to change this pattern through urbanization of interior cities like Chongquing. Its “one-hour economy circle plan” aims to settle two million residents from rural areas to within an hour’s drive of the city. [pp. 377-380, 384]
     

147. 
     Most of China’s large cities are located in the eastern half of the country, especially along or near the coast, or inland along major rivers. Cities along China’s east coast were heavily influenced by Western economic interests in China starting in the mid-nineteenth century, and their early urbanization, economic growth, and transportation links led to the development of other eastern Chinese cities. Japan also influenced the growth of Chinese cities, from its development and investment in industry in northeastern China. [pp. 381-384]
     

148. 
     China established six Special Economic Zones in the 1980s that were designed to attract foreign investment and boost production through incentives such as tax breaks. The SEZs are the cities of Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Shantou, Xiamen, and Pudong, and the island of Hainan. Except for Pudong (which is next to Shanghai), all the SEZs are located on China’s south or southeastern coasts in proximity to the economic powerhouse of Hong Kong, then still controlled by Great Britain (and to a lesser extent Macao, a Portuguese colony). Both Hong Kong and Macao, returned to China in 1997 and 1999 respectively, are designated a Special Administrative Regions (SAR). This essentially means that Hong Kong and Macau can continue as bastions of capitalism in a communist country. [pp. 383-384]
     

149. 
     Taiwan is an island 100 miles off China’s southeastern coast. It is mountainous and subtropical, and gave rise to one of Asia’s first industrialized countries. Taiwan’s GDP-PPP is four times that of mainland China’s, and while Taiwan is in most respects a more developed country, further economic growth may be limited by a lack of energy resources. Taiwan’s main political problem is mainland China’s insistence that the island is a renegade province and should be unified with the rest of China. Both Taiwan and the United States oppose this, despite the U.S.’s “One China Policy” that prevents diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Taiwan. The U.S. continues to assist Taiwan with military and economic aid packages. Mongolia, the first Asian country to abandon Communism, is a large, dry, isolated country. Most of its export income is derived from minerals and textiles, but the country is changing rapidly politically and economically, as private businesses are being established and state-owned land is being turned over to individuals. [pp. 384-387]
     

This module should enable your students to…

• 
  Recognize the pattern of natural hazards associated with locations where plates of the earth’s crust collide
  
• 
  Appreciate how countries burdened by a lack of natural resources can become prosperous by marshaling their human resources
  
• 
  Understand the unique challenges associated with a postindustrial society that has a prosperous and aging population
  
• 
  See how a country’s geographic location can make it a target of division and conquest
  
• 
  Appreciate how different political and economic systems can produce dramatically different results for almost identical peoples
  

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