Chapter 11: East Asia

Learning Objectives- After studying this chapter you should be able to:
•	Identify the key environmental differences between the island portions of East Asia (Japan and Taiwan) and the mainland
•	Describe the main environmental problems China faces today and compare them with the environmental challenges faced by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
•	Summarize the relationships among topography, climate, rice cultivation, and population density across East Asia
•	Explain why China’s population is so unevenly distributed, with some areas densely settled and others almost uninhabited
•	Outline the distribution of major urban areas across East Asia and explain why the continued expansion of the region’s largest cities is often viewed as a problem
•	Describe the ways in which religion and other systems of belief both unify and divide East Asia
•	Explain the distinction between the Han Chinese and the other ethnic groups of China, paying particular attention to language
•	Describe the geopolitical division of East Asia during the Cold War period and explain how the division of that period still influences East Asian geopolitical relations
•	Identify the main reasons behind East Asia’s rapid economic growth in recent decades and discuss any possible limitations to continued expansion at such a rate
•	Describe the differences in economic and social development found across China and, more generally, across East Asia as a whole

Terms-  You should understand these terms and be ready to identify them:
anthropogenic landscape A landscape heavily transformed by human agency.
autonomous region Chinese provinces that have been granted a certain degree of political and cultural freedom from centralized authority, due to the fact that they contain large numbers of non-Han Chinese people.
China proper The eastern half of China, where the Han Chinese form the dominant ethnic group.
Confucianism A philosophical system based upon the ideas of Confucius, a Chinese philosopher who lived in the 6th century BCE.
desertification The spread of desert conditions into semiarid areas due to improper management of the land.
diaspora The scattering of a particular group of people over a vast geographic area.
hiragana The main Japanese syllabary, used for writing indigenous words.
ideographic writing A system of writing in which each symbol represents not a sound but a concept.
kanji The Chinese characters, or ideographs, used in Japanese writing.
laissez-faire An economic system in which the state has minimal involvement and in which market forces largely guide economic activity.
loess A fine, wind-deposited sediment that makes fertile soil but is very vulnerable to water erosion.
Marxism A philosophy that presumes the desirability, and indeed, the necessity of a socialist economic system run through a central planning agency.
pollution exporting The process of exporting waste material to other countries, either directly or indirectly (such as relocating pollution-causing factories abroad).
rust belt Regions of heavy industry that experience marked economic decline after their factories cease to be competitive.
sediment load The amount of sand, silt and clay carried by a river.
shogun The true ruler of Japan before 1868. In contrast, the emperor’s power was merely symbolic.
social and regional differentiation A process by which certain classes of people , or regions of a country, grow richer when others grow poorer.
special administrative region In China, a region of the country that temporarily maintains its own laws and system of government, such as Hong Kong or Macao.
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Relatively small districts in China that have been fully opened to global capitalism.
sphere of influence In countries not fully colonized in the 19th and early 20th centuries (particularly China and Iran), limited areas gained by particular European countries for trade purposes, economic exploitation, and political manipulation.
superconurbation (megalopolis) A massive urban agglomeration that results from the coalescing of two or more formerly separate metropolitan areas.
tonal A language in which the same set of basic sounds may have different meanings depending upon the pitch in which they are uttered.
tribal peoples Societies that were traditionally organized at the village or clan level, without broader-scale political organization.