Expertly Crafted Essay On History Question Responses

1. Since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War, China has undergone many social and economic changes, for both ideological and practical reasons. When the communist party came to power, China had just ended a civil war, which had widespread negative effects on the economy of China. This lead to a phase of recovery which lasted a few short years. Also, the goals of the ruling government had changed; in order to be a communist nation, China would have to rapidly industrialize. This caused the institution of several five-year plans, the first of which began in 1953, focused on industrialization of the Chinese economy, socialization of resources, and centralized economic planning. The second five-year-plan was known as the Great Leap Forward and put so much emphasis on industry that agriculture suffered dramatically and the next five-year-plan attempted to correct this.
Essentially, the problems caused by a centralized economy had to be corrected each time a major policy change was implemented. By 1970, the government began to loosen its control over the economy, and when Chairman Mao died in 1976, many of his policies were replaced with more practical solutions for economic growth. One of the major changes during this time was the beginning of the integration into a global market, by opening up trade to other de-centralized economies. Since then, long-term goals have focused on modernizing and expanding Chinese markets, and the nation now serves as a large exporter of manufactured goods.
2. The Korean War was essentially a proxy war of the Cold War and the American plan to contain communism in order to weaken the influence of the Soviet Union. South Korea, which was allied with the United States, was invaded by forces from North Korea, which were backed by China and the Soviet Union. The conflict resulted in a divided peninsula that is currently in a ceasefire but very different and antagonistic towards one another. North Korea is a communist nation, while South Korea is not. This created alliances within East Asia, as China and North Korea had similar interests.
The Korean War also had a significant impact on China. Its entry into the war achieved gave the communist nation an opportunity to build up its military, as well as strengthen its ties with its ally, North Korea. The war was not as nearly as successful for the Soviet Union and this led to tensions in relations between China and the USSR, which may have in fact encouraged China’s gradual shift away from soviet ideals long before the fall of the USSR.
3. The recovery of Japan’s economy after WWII has been referred to as a miracle. Although the United States and Japan were enemies during the world war, afterwards they became allies. The benefit of this alliance for the United States was the containment of communism from China and the Soviet Union, and the benefit for Japan was a strong economic partner and source of foreign aid in the United States. The Japanese government also implemented several economic policies which encouraged growth in productivity, innovation, and the overall economic scale of the country. Japan became a more democratic nation, and many of these policies benefitted workers and cultivated a sense of allegiance between industry, labor, and the bureaucratic government. Even though they remained open to free markets, government intervention played a significant role in the recovery of Japan at this time.
The growth of the Japanese economy during the late 20th century had a positive impact for many other nations in East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and more recently, China, have all benefitted from the growth of the Japanese economy. Over the course of several decades, the expansion of Japanese influence in the region led to similar circumstances in surrounding, non-communist countries. Today, East Asia has a thriving economy, due in part to their proximity to Japan, which today has one of the world’s largest economies.
4. The sixteenth century saw the arrival of European imperialists to East Asia, which had largely been closed off from the western world for much of human history due to geographical factors. However, the development of maritime exploration in the west led to more convenient and frequent contact with East Asia. The Portuguese were the first to make contact with Asia via sea travel, and as the Dutch and explorers from other nations followed suit, their economic interests began to put pressure on the people of this region. European nations were in a race to build their own economic and political empires throughout the 16th through 19th centuries, and this often depended on exploiting Asian resources and labor.
China was largely affected by western influence during the period of European colonialism. Though they preferred an isolationist approach to dealing with the west, the Chinese were faced with military force from western nations. Defeat typically led to the enforcement of a treaty which unilaterally benefitted the western nation, and forced China to open ports to European markets which exploited Chinese labor and resources.
Korea remained fairly isolated throughout the period of European imperialist expansion and even into the 20th century. They even defended their right to remain independent in naval battles with the French and Americans during the 19th century. However, they were eventually pressured into opening up their ports by Japan, who forced a treaty on Korea that gave them exclusive trading rights, much like western powers had done in parts of Southeast Asia. In 1910 Korea was annexed by Japan and when the latter nation surrendered to Allied Forces at the end of WWII, the Korean peninsula was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union, which would eventually lead to the Korean War and continue to influence the area until the present day.
5. Toward the end of Japan’s medieval period, there was not a centralized government but a conglomeration of warring states. In 1600, the shoguns took power and Japan was reunified under a single government, which was from the beginning suspicious of western influence. This government chose to focus on strengthening the country internally throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and banned missionaries and trade from the west. This creates a period of peace for a few centuries before opening up to western trade. At that time, the main goal and benefit of having a strong central government was to modernize and be able to adapt and compete with western countries.
China has a long history of dynastic governments and a strong central state but this was challenged in the 19th century when population growth led to economic and political problems. The state began to lose power and China’s feudal system become the source of power locally and across China. China became weak to foreign invaders and this led to the end of the dynastic period of China and the establishment of a republican government in the early 20th century. This was fairly unstable and led to a Chinese Civil War between the nationalists and the communists. The Chinese Communist Party came to power and a centralized state government has been central to Chinese ideology since then.
Throughout the 16th to the 20th century, Korea was a monarchy and its location often meant that it was involved in the rivalry between China and Japan in the quest for expansion. In the 20th century, however, Korea largely lost its independence and came under the control of China, Japan, and eventually the Soviet Union and the United States before becoming the independent states they are now. Realistically, the power of the state since then has grown only in terms of Korea’s relationship to other state powers.
6. China is the home of one of the oldest civilizations on the planet and much of the culture of Korea and Japan were originally shaped by Chinese traditions. The alphabets and scripts of East Asia are based on Chinese characters, and they also share a common philosophy based on Confucian ideology. Art, entertainment and food also developed along similar cultural lines in each of these countries, and they all leant something to one another in terms of cultural influence. This was especially true before contact with the west. They also share a strong sense of collectivism, or a belief in the importance of greater good over the will of the individual, and in a way this was often shown to shape the respective political systems of Japan, China, and Korea throughout the pre-modern and modern era. Korea was a monarchy for most of that time period, while China saw the end of its long dynastic rule by the beginning of the 20th century, and Japan lost its emperor at the end of WWII.
Regardless of their similarities, pressures from the outside world from the 16th to the 20th centuries caused each nation to respond differently. China was the first nation to fall prey to western economic imperialism, and this caused the eventual downfall of the dynastic state. The feudal system which had been in place for centuries broke down and lead to civil war, which set the stage for the rise of the communist party. Japan responded to this same outside threat differently, but partly because of its location and relative isolation from the initial wave of European colonialism in East and Southeast Asia. It had more time to prepare itself to respond to, and adapt to the outside world. Japan embraced capitalism, and eventually democracy as well as the influence of Western culture. Korea remained largely isolated from western influence during this time period and its culture remained uninfluenced by the west until the Korean War brought the Cold War, the 20th century version of European Imperialism, to the Korean Peninsula.