Modern Northeast Asia

Lecture | GE 3219 – Elective on Northeast Asia

OUTLINE

From Late Cold War in

War in Post-Cold 20th 21st
80s to Northeast
East Asia Asia War Century Century
Early 90s
From Late 80s to Early 90s
Old East Asian World Order
• Qing Emperor had presided as the “Son of Heaven”
• Foreign powers had arrived with gunboats and with a hunger for
markets that could serve their expanding economies and their
colonial interests
Korean Peninsula
• Joseon had emerged alongside the Ming Empire during the 14th
century after the civil wars that expelled the Mongols from China
• 1984 Tonghak Uprising in which a religious sect rose in rebellion
against the Joseon King.
• Regent for the child-king Gojong overcame uprisings and resisted
foreign incursions
• King Gojong place Korea on its own self-strengthening program
• 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki
Japan and the Meiji Miracle
• A new constitution that was the basis for governance
• Meiji oligarchs were a very special class of leaders
• Meiji oligarchs formed political parties in anticipation of a national
assembly
• Meiji Japan had a new working class
• Zaibatsu or large family conglomerates
• Population in the Meiji era grew along with food production
China under the Qing Dynasty
• Faced unequal treaties that had begun
with the British Victory in the Opium War
of 1839-1842
• In the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan
won the right for all the foreign powers to
build their own factories in China.
• Partial failure of the Treaty of
Shimonoseki led to the “scramble for
concessions” in China
• Qing’s self-strengthening effort were
hampered by various factors and resulted
in a string of costly losses at the hands of
the imperialist powers
• Japan’s entry into the scramble for
concessions in China inspired a new
generation of Chinese political activists to
the learn from Japan’
• Boxer Rebellion or Uprising from 1899-
1901 was triggered by the entry of the
United States in the scramble for
concessions in China
• The Boxer Protocol of 1901 ended Boxer
Rebellion and imposed another heavy
indemnity against the Qing
Revolutionary China
• Qing reformers focused on ending the highly selective system of civil
service examinations
• Call for a new Chinese nationalism and revolution against the Qing
Regime
Revolutionary Alliance
• An alliance of Chinese students in • Arguments for revolution now included
Japan and the rising leader of Chinese a strong racialist rhetoric
revolutionaries overseas • On October 10, 1911 – New Army
• Sun Yat-sen led this alliance officers who had joined the
• The Revolutionary Alliance was fragile. Revolutionary Alliance sparked a
military revolt that inspired all the
• America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of southern provinces to separate from
1882 that was racially discriminatory the Qing empire
contributed further to the cause of the
Alliance
Japanese Imperial Expansion
• 1919 Versailles Peace Conference or • Korean nationalists held public
the Paris Peace Conference demonstrations called the March
promised to use international First Movement as they wanted to
diplomacy to end imperialism and be free Japanese colonialism
foster independence around the • Disenfranchised Chinese launched a
globe massive public campaign, beginning
• For various Japanese factions, both with the 1919 May Fourth
found domestically and Movement, with the goal of
internationally, the treaty had recovering their territories from the
different meanings Germans
Approaches to political activism in Northeast Asia
• Corporatist Approach
• Liberal and Social Democratic Approach
• Communist Approach
• Regardless of the approach, political leaders aimed to use them to the
advantage of their state
Chinese Communist Party
• Emerged not from Beijing but from
the southern coastal city of
Guangzhou (Canton)
• Highly centralized and
compartmentalized
• Military arm of the new party, led
by Chiang Kai Shek, launched a
northern expedition against the
warlord regimes in 1927
• Communists later moved to the
countryside
Kantogun or the Kwantung Army
• Strengthened their position in
defense of the growing Japanese
corporate interests
• Also succeeded in destabilizing
domestic politics in Japan
• Continued to provoke military
incidents in Manchuria,
War in East Asia
• Nationalists’ northern expedition
against the warlords in 1927
• Three-way war escalated with the
Japanese Kantōgun (Kwantung
Army) occupation of Manchuria in
1931
• Japan’s “Southern Strategy” of
expansion into Southeast Asia
• Japan destroyed the U.S. fleet at
Pearl Harbor and captured
Southeast Asian colonies
• 1945, United States had liberated
the Philippines and was
negotiating plans for the end of
the East Asian war with the Soviet
Union and the other Allied Powers
• After the U.S. atomic bombing of
Hiroshima in August 1945, WWII
ended
• Communist victory in China occurred in 1949
• Mao Zedong helped overcome the Japanese invasion of China and led
the communists in defeating the nationalist in China
• Kim Il Sung, backed by communist forces domestically and
internationally, had control over the northern part of Korea
• Syngman Rhee, backed by the US and its allies, emerged as the leader
of the southern part of Korea
Cold War in Northeast Asia
China
• With the “liberation” of China in 1949, Mao had
announced that the PRC would have to “lean to
one side” in the Cold War.
• In China in the 1930s industrial development was
in its infancy, a weak Nationalist government
faced escalating Japanese encroachment, and a
growing but increasingly impoverished peasantry
remained disengaged from national politics.
• Mao Zedong adapted the theory and practice of
Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions.
• Anti-Rightist campaign in 1957 was the CCP’s
crackdown on the critics of Mao’s policies
• Great Leap Forward implemented large-scale
rural communes
• In 1966, Mao drew on his own political charisma
to regain control of the party and appeal to the
nation’s youth to launch a Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution
• Revolution in China ground to a halt as the most
radical idealists presided over a nation with little
appetite for further change.
Korean War
• By 1950, Kim Il-sung and his Korean Workers’ Party had carried out
land reforms and nationalized the heavy industries led by the
Japanese in the North.
• Kim Il-sung’s Korean Liberation Army launched its conquest of the
South in June of 1950, occupying Seoul in a few days and restricting
the ROK to the southeastern “Pusan perimeter” by summer’s end.
• General MacArthur led a massive U.S. invasion that first turned the
tide against the North,
• Korean War ended with the establishment of the 38th parallel as a
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between two separate Korean regimes
Japan
• Dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
• LDP succeeded in limiting efforts by labor unions, the faction-ridden
Socialist Party, and a smaller Communist Party to gain a share of the
power.
• University students in Japan who were opposed to U.S. hegemony
organized student strikes and protests against Japan’s compliance
with the growing American military involvement in Vietnam.
• Japan produced annual double-digit economic growth with nearly full
employment being guaranteed by the large corporations
South Korea
• Had a military government
• Extremely unpopular Syngman Rhee was re-elected president among
reports of widespread fraud in 1960.
• New National Assembly took power but was shut down by a military
coup led by General Park Chung-Hee
• Combined strong state-supported conglomerates like those in Japan,
called chaebol, while suppressing the labor unions along with
students and popular opposition.
OUTLINE

From Late Cold War in

War in Post-Cold 20th 21st
80s to Northeast
East Asia Asia War Century Century
Early 90s
Post-Cold War
Emergence of the Four Little
Dragons or Asian Tigers
• South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Singapore
• Together with Japan, all five countries were
called the East Asian Miracle
China
• 1972 Shanghai Communique
• Deng Xiaoping emerged as leader of People’s
Republic of China in 1974
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics
• In Taiwan, martial law had prevailed since 1947
• The world’s legitimization of the People’s
Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese
state and government deprived the Republic of
China or Taiwan its statehood and sovereignty in
the mainland.
South Korea
• Tensions in South Korea
under Park Chung-hee
escalated right along with
the economic success
• A new dictator, Chun Doo-
hwan, emerged to crush a
student uprising in
Kwangju
North Korea
• Its economy under the
weight of its heavy
industry began to stagnate
20th Century
Northeast Asia
• Focus was split between the ongoing economic development of the
whole region and the newly developing popular culture that
followed the extensive influence of digital technology around the
globe
• Authoritarian political cultures adapted to the emerging new world
in various ways
Taiwan
• Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor
• In 1979, Chiang was already overseeing the rapid
economic development recognized as the “Taiwan
Miracle”
• In 1987, formally ended the martial law in Taiwan
• Chiang’s death in 1988 was followed by an orderly
transition
• Taiwan remains an island state without independent
status among nations
China
• Argued over what kind of
participatory political reform was
suitable to Chinese conditions as
economic growth accelerated
• Experienced aggressive demands for
more freedom of expression
• Government primary response was
to clamp down these demands by
removing the younger progressive
Hu Yaobang as general secretary of
the CCP
• 1989 Tiananmen Square
Demonstrations and Massacre
Japan
• The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had managed to stay
in power since 1955 by maintaining a consensus among
contending factions within and splitting the opposition
without.
• Carefully managed economic policy was so successful
• Memories of Japanese imperialism and suspicions of its
leaders’ designs still colored international relations and
recurrent popular protests
• 1993, a coalition of LDP breakaway factions, socialist
parties, and the Buddhist-inspired Clean Government
Party formed the first non-LDP government in Japan
since 1955
• LDP breakup led to a decade-long series of weak coalition
governments
South Korea
• South Korean activists found their voice in
grassroots cultural revivals.
• Chun Doo-Hwan had tried to implement social
reforms but had never become popular
• Roh Tae Woo had a brief presidency
• Kim Young Sam was the new popularly elected
president in 1991
21st Century
North Korea
• Kim Il-Sung, the Great Leader, died in 1997
• Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader, succeeded
North Korean leadership
• Scarcely connected to the global capitalist
economy, but it was already hard hit by the
demise of its Soviet and Eastern European
trading partners.
• Kim Jong Un, son and successor of Kim Jong
Il, stubbornly pursued the North’s military
goals, including nuclear weapons, to the
point of shutting down exchanges with the
South entirely
South Korea
• Kim Dae Jung had led the opposition to Park
Chung-hee in the National Assembly of
South Korea ever since the 1961 coup, with
near unanimous electoral support from his
district.
✓1998 Sunshine Policy was Kim Dae Jung’s
outreach program towards North Korea
✓Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000
• Park Geun Hye is the first woman president
of South Korea
China
• Decision to spur rapid growth but limited political
participation outside the Communist Party enabled the
government to weather the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis
and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis
• A new constitution in China has imposed limits of two
consecutive five-year terms on the offices of president
and premier, ensuring regular changes in leadership.
• CCP adopted new rules for membership, inviting
private entrepreneurs and recruiting among the newly
educated, many of whom studied abroad.
• Recognizing the need and the value of investigative
reporting, legal training, and critical voices at the
grassroots level, the party adopted changes in the
language of governance.
• Social action and popular culture in China is vibrant
Northeast Asia
• In 2013, China and Japan were facing off
over a string of uninhabited rocky islets
north of Taiwan.
• Status of Taiwan remains undefined in
terms of international law
• In 1997, Hong Kong reverted to Chinese
sovereignty to begin a 50-year trial as
China’s only “Special Autonomous
Region.”
• Tibet and Xinjiang, sparsely populated by
people whose cultures and languages
have deep roots beyond traditional
Chinese ones, are defined by China as
“Autonomous Regions” with special
administrative characteristics.
Northeast Asia
• In Japan, the renewal of LDP
strength since 2003 and the
boisterousness of right-wing
conservatives have led to tensions
with China
• US still interferes in Northeast Asia
• In the early 2010s, only the Korean
Workers’ Party and the people of
North Korea seem to lack a clear
path for integrating into this
changing Northeast Asian world.
 REFERENCE

Dennerline, J. (2015). Modern East Asia: A History. In Dennerline, J.,

Gottschang, T. Kim, J., Notar, B. & Prescott, A. (Eds.), East Asia in the
world: An introduction. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.