China and Japan

Imperialism in China
 By the end of 18th century, Indo-British
economic ties were so entrenched in a
neo-mercantile system that India
provide a stepping stone for British
trade with China.
 English wool and Indian cotton for Chinese
teas and textile
 By the 1830’s, Britain realized it could
make up the trade deficit with China by
selling Indian opium into the Chinese
markets.
 Concerned with the sharp rise in opium
addiction and the associated social
costs and rise in criminal acts, the
Chinese government, led by the aging
Manchu dynasty, took action against the
British.
 In 1839, the Chinese destroyed British
opium in the port city of Canton,
sparking the Opium Wars of 1839-1842.
 The British expeditionary force
blockaded Chinese ports, occupied
Shanghai, and took complete control of
Canton.
 1842 -Treaty of Nanking
 By the end of the century, after five wars
between China and various European
powers, France, Britain, Germany,
Japan and Russia held territorial and
commercial advantages in their
respective spheres of influence.
 In 1899, the United States, freshly
anointed as an international force by its
crushing victory over Spain in 1898
Spanish-American War.
 The US advocated and pushed through
a new Open door policy.
 Demanded that all nations should be given
equal and complete rights to Chinese
markets.
 Europeans maintained extraterritoriality
inside thousands of Chinese port cities.
 The resulting lawlessness on the part of
the Europeans, combined with the
actuality of European economic,
political, and military domination of the
Chinese, contributed to a virulent anti-
imperial sentiment.
 In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion saw that
sentiment explode into mass social
unrest and war.
 Beyond China, European imperialism in
Asia remained strong. Britain moved into
Hong Kong in 1842, into Burma in 1886,
and into Kowloon in 1898. France took
direct control over the provinces of
Indochina--Annam, Tonkin, and
Cochinchina (which together make up
modern day Vietnam), Laos, and
Cambodia.
China and Japan
 In the context of a) the political chaos that
follows the fall of the centralized dynastic
power of the Qing in the Republican
Revolution in 1911 and b) the growing
nationalism that crystallizes as the May 4th
Movement after the 1919 Versailles Peace
settlement (see topic 8) — two political parties
work and compete to reunify China and to
modernize it to face the challenge of
imperialist encroachment by the West and
Japan. These are the Nationalist Party
(Guomindang or Kuomintang) and the Chinese
Communist Party.
 Inadequate political control over the
Japanese military, economic strains, and
the worldwide Depression of the 1930s set
the stage for the rise of the military in
Japan and the pursuit of Japanese
imperialist interests in Asia. Japan feels
excluded by the West in the division of
spoils in China. Japan pursues its own
dominance of China by occupying
Manchuria in 1931 and invading China in
1937 and remaining there until its defeat at
the conclusion of WW II in 1945.
 In China, the army of the Nationalist Party, led by
Chiang Kai-shek (political heir of Sun Yat-sen),
marches north in 1926 on the "Northern Expedition"
from its base in southern China to establish a new
government at Nanking in 1927 and to reunify part of
China. This is sometimes called the Nationalist
Revolution. The Nationalist government remained in
power in Nanking until 1937 (1927-37 is known as
the "Nanking Decade") when it is forced by the
Japanese invasion to move inland and ultimately
establish its wartime capital in Chungking
(Chongqing) in 1938, where it remains until 1945.
Japan captures the capital city of Nanking in 1937 in
a brutal battle and subsequent reign of terror known
as the "Rape of Nanking."
 Members of the Chinese Communist
Party, pursued by the Nationalists in the
1930s, march from southern China to a
remote region, Yenan, in northern China
where they refine strategies for rural
mobilization and revolution. This "Long
March" takes place from 1934-1935.
 When the Japanese attack the American
fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December
7, 1941, the United States enters World
War II and goes to war with Japan; the war
ends when the U.S. drops atomic bombs
on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki
(August 9) in Japan in 1945 and Japan
surrenders unconditionally to the Allied
forces. Japan's first attempt to enter the
modern international system ends in
failure.
 During the course of the war Japan
conquers other Asian nations, pursuing
its own imperialist objectives and
challenging Western powers for
economic and military dominance in
Asia. Hostility and unsettled issues
resulting from the Japanese occupation
remain in Japan's relations with Korea,
China, and the countries of South-East
Asia.
China and Japan(1945-present)
 When WW II ends in 1945 with Japan's
defeat in China, the Nationalists and the
Communist forces fight a civil war for
control of China. The Communists are
victorious in 1949 and the Nationalists
leave the mainland of China and establish
a rival government on the island of Taiwan.
(The rival governments continue to exist
today as the People's Republic of China on
the mainland and the Republic of China on
Taiwan.)
 The Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-
1952), headed by General Douglas
MacArthur and the American forces,
constitutes the third major historical
instance in which Japan deliberately
borrows and adapts from other countries.
(The first is in the 6th century to the
8th century when Japan looks to China for
models during Japan's classical period; the
second instance is in the late 1800s when
Japan looks to the West as it seeks to
modernize under the Meiji Restoration.)
Korea:Colonialism,Liberation, a
nd Civil War
 Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) was a
deeply ambivalent experience for Koreans.
On the one hand, Japanese colonialism
was often quite harsh. For the first ten
years Japan ruled directly through the
military, and any Korean dissent was
ruthlessly crushed. After a nationwide
protest against Japanese colonialism that
began on March 1, 1919, Japanese rule
relaxed somewhat, allowing a limited
degree of freedom of expression for
Koreans.
 Despite the often oppressive and heavy-handed rule
of the Japanese authorities, many recognizably
modern aspects of Korean society emerged or grew
considerably during the 35-year period of colonial
rule. These included rapid urban growth, the
expansion of commerce, and forms of mass culture
such as radio and cinema, which became
widespread for the first time. Industrial development
also took place, partly encouraged by the Japanese
colonial state, although primarily for the purposes of
enriching Japan and fighting the wars in China and
the Pacific rather than to benefit the Koreans
themselves. Such uneven and distorted development
left a mixed legacy for the peninsula after the
colonial period ended.
 By the time of the Japanese surrender in
August 1945, Korea was the second-most
industrialized nation in Asia after Japan
itself.
 But the wartime mobilization of 1937-1945
had reintroduced harsh measures to
Japanese colonial rule, as Koreans were
forced to work in Japanese factories and
were sent as soldiers to the front. Tens of
thousands of young Korean women were
drafted as “Comfort Women” - in effect,
sexual slaves - for Japanese soldiers.
 In 1939, Koreans were even pressured
by the colonial authorities to change
their names to Japanese names, and
more than 80 percent of the Koreans
complied with the name-change
ordinance.