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Chapter 10 Lecture
World Regional
Geography
A Developmental Approach
11th Edition
East Asia

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Chapter Learning Outcomes
• Compare and contrast the physical environments of countries in the region.
• Understand the sources and causes of China’s environmental degradation.
• Know how China’s agricultural economy has been transformed since the
late 1970s reforms.
• Recognize how the late 1970s reforms have developed China’s industrial
economy.
• Describe the different economic characteristics of China’s three primary and
globalized urban-economic regions.
• Explore how China’s rural and urban population contours have changed as
a result of the late 1970s reforms.
• Explain the success of both South Korea’s and Taiwan’s economic
development strategies.
• Identify the reasons for Japan’s past economic successes and for its current
economic decline.
• Outline the reasons for and impacts China and Japan’s population decline.

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Map

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Political Units of East Asia

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Size of East Asia compared to United States

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Environmental Challenges
• Environmental quality has suffered.
– Large population density
– Rapid economic growth
• Clean freshwater is perhaps the biggest
challenge facing the region.
• Air pollution is the other major
environmental problem.

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Population

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China
• Third largest country in the world
• Similarities to United States
– Similar east–west longitudinal pattern as forty-
eight U.S. states
– Spatial distribution of landforms and climates
• Low plains and mountains in East
• Higher mountains in West

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China
• Not as much maritime air masses to bring rain to West as in
United States
• East more densely populated
• Loess plateau—Most specialized region
– Elevated tableland 4,000–5,000 feet above sea level
– Between Ordos Desert and North China Plain
• North China Plain—Extensive riverine surface built up from silt
deposits
• Sichuan Basin
– One of the largest interior basins in China
– Densely inhabited by an agricultural population
– Cool, humid winters
– Warm, humid summers
• Three Gorges—Chang Jiang (“long river”)
– Dam construction
– Harness hydroelectric power

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China
• Yunnan Plateau
– Elevations 5,000–9,000 feet
– Dissected upland
• Northeast Plain
– Extensive rolling hill surface
– Grain farming region
• Two environmental zones
1. Tibetan Plateau—25 percent of China’s territory
• Largest, most elevated plateau in the world
• “Rooftop of the world”
• Averages 13,200 feet
2. Tarim Basin—Internal drainage
• Population distribution highly uneven
• Reflects climatic patterns
• Spatial variation in distribution of cultural minority groups

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China / Population

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Spatial Evolution of Chinese Political
Territory

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Chinese History
• Shang (1766–1122 BC)—First Chinese dynasty
• Zhou (1027–256 BC)
– Replaced Shang
– Infused tradition of Confucianism as opposed to legalism
• Warring States Period (403–221 BC)
• Qin (221–207 BC)
– China became single state and culture
– Imposed uniformity
• Han (206 BC–220 AD)
– Organizers of first true-scale East Asian empire
– Dominated territory equivalent to present-day China
– Concentration on the North
– Construction of Grand Canal

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Chinese History
• Song, or Sung (AD 960–1279)
– Distinctive period for economic development
– Expanded use of early ripening rice varieties
– Irrigation improvements
– Better marketing and distribution systems
– Lessons
• Chinese are not static; internal forces typically
force change.
• Evidence is that Europe has not always been
technologically superior.

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East Meets West
• Eighteenth century brings meeting of East and West.
• Arrival of Western traders signaled start of demise of
world’s oldest culture.
• Opium trade by British sparks a confrontation.
• First Opium War—Humiliating Chinese defeat
– Five coastal ports forced to be open to Western interests
– These enclaves essentially became foreign-owned territories.
• Westernizing influences
– China as a market for manufactured goods
– Railroads
– Western medicine and banking
– Victorian morality

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New China
• Boxer Rebellion (1900)
– First expression of nationalism
– Opposition to foreigners and Chinese doing business with foreigners
• Nationalist movements in wake of collapse of Qing
government in 1911
– Establishment of the Nationalist Party
– Sun Yat-sen
– Chiang Kai-shek replaces Sun in 1925.
• Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established in 1921.
– Mao Ze-dong emerged as leader in 1935.
– Support from U.S.S.R.
– Urban-based party
• Civil war between Nationalists and CCP
• 1949—Nationalists flee to Taiwan; Communists take over.

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China / Agriculture

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China / Agriculture
• Even in 1990s, still predominantly an agricultural
country.
• Yet 7 percent of world’s most arable land and
only half considered of good quality
• Three primary agricultural regions
• Widespread use of agricultural intensification
• Supplementary crops
• Cultivated for commercial purposes
– Vegetables
– Soybeans
– Fruit orchards

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Post-Mao Agricultural Reform
• Household responsibility system (1978)
• Production contract
• “Responsibility land” granted to peasant.
• Household is obliged to produce a specific amount of grain or cotton
sold to state at regulated price.
• Once contract fulfilled, free to produce cash crops.
• Peasants empowered
• By 1991, production increased dramatically.
– Greater use of fertilizers
– Green Revolution hybrid varieties
• Still some serious drawbacks
• Underproduction of grains and cotton
– Government prices favored vegetables and fruits.
– Free markets increased.
– Food consumption of more affluent created additional demands.

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Economic Growth of China
• Policy to promote regional self-sufficiency through spatially
equitable distribution of manufacturing
• Reasonably successful
• Global economy made China a richer nation.
– Brought inequities
– Some regions benefited greater than others.
• Mineral resource endowment and distribution
– Full complement of mineral resources for industrial goals
• World’s largest coal producer
• Second largest consumer of oil
• Must import vast quantities
• Third in global production of iron ore
• First in tin
• Third in lead and zinc

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China / Industry
• Early development in heavy industry
– Iron and steel
– Chemicals
– Electricity generation
– Textiles
• All state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
• Due to military relations, new industrial development needed
interior location in order to avoid external attack
• Late 1970s—Dramatic change in industrial policy
• Increases levels of financial aid decision-making
decentralization
• Transition from rigid central planning to free-market principles
• Rapid growth of town and village enterprises (TVEs)

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China / Economy
• Northeast has fared the worst.
• Bohai Sea Rim
– Includes Beijing and Tianjin
– Accounts for 14 percent of national population
– 19 percent of national GDP
• Southeast—Most changed region
• Chang Jiang River area—Dominant economic region in East
• Shanghai since the early 1990s
– Government decision as a counterweight to Guangdong
– Foreign investment
– Other cities have prospered in its shadow.
• Suzhou
• Wuxi
• Ningbo

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Mineral Resources of China

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China / Inequalities in the System
• Factors
– FDI
– Private domestic investment
– TVE economic impact
• Winners
– Coastal towns
• Foreign manufacturing facilities are located
• Far outstripped other areas
– Domestically owned modern industries favored by government
investment
– Specialty crop farmers cater to affluent urban markets.
• Core-periphery relationship between interior and coastal
provinces is emerging.

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China / Inequalities in the System

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China / Urbanization and Migration
• Communist restriction on movement to urban centers
– Reduced unplanned growth
– Enabled avoidance of squatter settlement development
• Urban places viewed with contempt and distrust.
– Breeding grounds for more educated and commercially
oriented capitalist urban classes
– Antiurban bias exhibited in Cultural Revolution
• Loosening of population movement restrictions brought
migration to cities (floating population).
• Urban housing
– Private ownership very small
– Some movement away from state-run, toward market
principles

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China / Urban Growth

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China / Special Economic Zones

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China / Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) &
Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
• Open door policy
– Recognized benefits of FDI
– Win–win
• 1979—SEZs
– Originally centered in Eastern seaboard cities
• Zhuhai
• Shenzhen
• Shantou
• Xiamen
• Hainan Island (1988)
• In many ways, like modern-day treaty ports

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China and Hong Kong

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Beijing and Shanghai
• Two largest cities
• Both megacities with over 10 million population
• Beijing
– Dates back to thirteenth century
– Traditionally typified conservative orderly and inward nature of Chinese culture
– Forbidden City
– Tiananmen Square
– Political center of Middle Kingdom
– Some light and heavy industry
• Shanghai
– Represents outward/commercial nature of Chinese
– Characteristic of a southern Chinese village
– Roots as a fishing village
– Leading industrial center
• Chemical
• Textile
• Metal
– Food processing
– Pudong—Financial district

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Mongolia

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Mongolia
• Physically isolated and landlocked
• Three times the size of California
• Historically known as home of pastoral
nomadic empires such as those controlled
by Genghis Khan and Kablal Kahn
• Stagnate economy until the 2000s where
mineral resources have been opened for
development

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The Two Koreas

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The Two Koreas
• Politically divided
• North Korea
– Insulated/insular society and economy
– Communist system
• South Korea
– Economic development through foreign relations
– Democratic system

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Taiwan

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Taiwan
• Chinese Nationalists fled to island in 1949
after communists took over mainland.
• People’s Republic of China (PRC) still
considers Taiwan a “province.”
• Not recognized around the world as a
separate country
• Noises of independence declaration

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Japan
• Land of contrasts (contradictions between
history and modernity)
• Nature versus cluttered environment
• Traditional dress contrasting with urbanity
• Economic contrasts

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Japan

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History of Japan
• Jomon culture—Earliest known culture
• Yayoi culture
– Replaced Jomon some 2,300 years ago
– Introduced religion that eventually developed into Shintoism
• Yamato period
– 1,700 years ago
– Introduced great transformation of Japanese culture and politics
• Nara and Heian periods
– 700 to 1100s
– Chinese influences began to mature.
• Bakafu—“behind the scenes” rulers between 1100s and 1800s
• Tokugawa Period
– Shogunate (military dictatorship)
– Highly centralized administrative structure
– Elevated levels of economic development
– Urbanization and interaction with settlements increased

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Japan and Foreign Influence
• 1543—Portuguese were first Europeans to arrive.
– Spanish, Dutch, and English followed over the next year.
– Impressed with Japanese technological and cultural
achievements
– Japanese attracted to guns, tobacco, and Chinese luxuries.
• 1600s
– Increasing suspicions of Westerners and Western religion
– 1640—Spanish and Portuguese expelled.
– Dutch, English, and Chinese confined to areas around the
port of Nagasaki.
• 1853—Isolation ends with arrival of American
Commodore Perry in Tokyo.

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History of Japan / First Transformation
• Zaibatsu
– Large industrial and financial cliques that provided
an effective means of marshalling private capital for
investment
– Fueled Meiji Restoration economic transformation
• Military victories at end of nineteenth century
– Victory over China (1895)
– Victory over Russia (1905)
• Experiences with colonization through mid-1940s
– Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1911)
– SE Asia and parts of Pacific
– Short-lived and brutal

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History of Japan / Second Transformation
• Economic development in the wake of defeat in World War II
– Amounted to a sped-up repeat of the Rostow model
– Allies’ imposition of political structure
– American investment
• Aspects of Japan Model reemerged
– Keiretsu
– Breakup of zaibatsu reconstituted
– Played a major role in post-WWII growth
• Bureaucratic capitalism
– Influence of governmental ministries
– Especially Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)
• Tiered economic structure
• By 1980s, became largest single source of FDI.
• Population stabilization

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Modern Japan
• Government guidance, not control
• Competent bureaucracy
• Proper sequencing of the development process
• Focus on comparative advantage and regional specialization
• Wise investment of surplus capital
• Development of infrastructure
• Emphasis on education
• Upgrading of labor force
• Population planning
• Powerful force in twentieth century as other Asian states
attempted to do the same thing
• Twentieth century adaptations to unique state conditions; it
might better be termed the “East Asian Model.”

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Japan / Landforms
• Occupies a small, but geologically active, portion
of the Pacific Ring of Fire
• Mountains are rugged with steep slopes, but not
by world standards.
– Most peaks are below 6,000 feet.
– Ten are higher than 9,000 feet.
• Fifty-four volcanoes
• Rest of area are flat surfaces found either as
terraces at the downside slope of mountains or
along relatively narrow coastal plains.
• Tokyo occupies the Kanto Plain.

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Japan / Urban-Industrial Regions
• Levels of urbanization increased post-WWII
• Tokaido Megalopolis
– Largest concentration of urban-industrial activity
– Island of Honshu
– Tokyo–Yokohama (Keihin)
– Nagoya (Chukyo)
– Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto (Hanshin)
• Industrialization provided major stimulus for
urbanization.

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Tokyo
• Imperial capital
• Seat of Japanese government
• Center of media and advertising
• Country’s dominant financial and corporate center
• Home to greatest number of universities
• Home of Tsukuba Science City, the first and
largest of Japan’s many planned research nodes
or “tecnhopoles”
• Asian Pacific Rim economic hub
• One of three command centers of global finance
(along with New York and London)
• A growing megacity (8.6 million)

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Resources of Japan
• Severely lacking resources
• Must import everything needed for energy
production and industrial development
(except hydropower)
• Only 17.5 percent self-sufficient in 2005

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Japan / Environmental Challenges
• Location and insularity
– NE corner of Asian region
– Little smaller than California
– Island country off a large continental mainland (often
compared to Great Britain in this vein)
– Archipelagic country—Main body is composed of four
large islands.
• Climate
– Varied due to long size, mountains, and surrounded
by water
– Monsoon climate a little different from the rest of East
Asia due to more northern location and maritime
environment

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Japan / Environmental Challenges
• Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
– In the late afternoon of March 11, 2011, Japan
experienced the world’s worst nuclear disaster since
the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.
– An earthquake registering 9.0 on the Richter scale
occurred 43 miles (69 kilometers) off the coast of
northeastern Honshu.
– This was the most powerful earthquake experienced
in Japan and the fifth most powerful in the world
since 1900.
– Tsunami waves generated by the earthquake flooded
three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant complex

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Japan / Economic Challenges
• Urban challenges
– Increasing urban populations
– Infrastructure challenges
– Housing
• Pollution of the environment
– Intensified environmental pollution
– In 1970s, created their own Environment Agency (similar
to Environmental Protection Agency) in reaction to protests
about increasing environmental challenges.
• Regional imbalances
– Economic development has favored the Pacific side.
– Tokyo served as a primate city.

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Japan / Population Challenges

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Summary of Chapter
• While the countries of East Asia are characterized by export-led
economies that are in some form government-administered,
each has experienced very different development trajectories.
• China has grown into the world’s second largest economy.
China assumed the rank of a global economic power as a result
of its late 1970s reform policies that reduced the commanding
role of the state in economic growth.
• Although the globalization of China’s economy has brought
many material benefits, lingering problems call into question the
durability of this economic success.
• China’s neighbors have experienced different economic growth
trajectories.
• Japan was the first non-Western country to industrialize based
on its own distinctive model of modernization and development.