1 Two Contrasting Paths
1.1 China and Japan at the Start of the Nineteenth Century
At the start of the nineteenth century, China dominated East Asia. The Qing dynasty, heir to a long tradition, seemed secure in its power. Japan, a small island country, seemed locked in isolation by comparison. Yet within a few decades everything reversed. China was thrown into turmoil, unable to face the colonial challenge: the imperial government lost political control, could not reform effectively, and the country was convulsed by civil war. Japan, on the other hand, built a modern nation-state, created an industrial economy, and even established a colonial empire by taking over Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910). It defeated China, the very land that had been the source of its own culture and ideals, in 1894, and it defeated Russia, a European power, in 1905.
China’s response was slower. Chinese thinkers sought to redefine their traditions to cope with the modern world and to free the country from Western and Japanese control. They came to believe both goals, removing inequalities at home and rebuilding national strength, could be achieved through revolution. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) emerged victorious from the civil war in 1949. But by the end of the 1970s, Chinese leaders felt their ideological system was holding back economic growth, and wide-ranging reforms brought back capitalism and the free market even as the Party kept political control.
Japan became an advanced industrial nation, but its drive for empire led to war and defeat at the hands of the Allied forces. The US Occupation began a more democratic political system, and Japan rebuilt its economy to emerge by the 1970s as a major economic power. Japan’s path to modernisation was built on capitalist principles, carried out inside a world dominated by Western colonialism; Japanese expansion was justified by the call to resist Western domination and liberate Asia.
Question 6 (short essay) always asks whether Japan’s rapid industrialisation led to wars and environmental destruction. Answer yes to both, and use the exact evidence in Sections 5 and 3 of these notes (wars with China 1894-95 and Russia 1904-05; Tanaka Shozo’s 1897 pollution agitation and the 1960s Minamata mercury poisoning) rather than a general impression.
1.2 The Physical and Cultural Contrast
China is a vast continental country spanning many climatic zones. Its core is dominated by three river systems: the Yellow River (Huang He), the Yangtse River (Chang Jiang), the third-longest river in the world, and the Pearl River. Much of the country is mountainous. The dominant ethnic group is the Han, and the major language is Chinese (Putonghua), but many other nationalities live in China too, such as the Uighur, Hui, Manchu and Tibetan, along with dialects such as Cantonese (Yue) and Shanghainese (Wu). Chinese food reflects this regional diversity: Cantonese cuisine in the south (dim sum), wheat in the north, spicy Szechuan food in the west (from Buddhist-monk spices along the Silk Route and Portuguese chillies), and both rice and wheat in the east.
Japan, by contrast, is a string of islands, the four largest being Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkaido. More than half the land area of the main islands is mountainous, and Japan sits in a very active earthquake zone, which has shaped its architecture. The population is largely Japanese, with a small Ainu minority and Koreans who were forcibly brought as labour when Korea was a Japanese colony. Japan lacks a tradition of animal rearing; rice is the staple crop and fish the major source of protein.
| Feature | China | Japan |
|---|---|---|
| Physical shape | Vast continental country, many climate zones, mostly mountainous | A string of islands (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido), 50%+ mountainous, earthquake-prone |
| Rivers | Yellow River, Yangtse (3rd longest in the world), Pearl River | No major river system named in the chapter |
| Dominant people / language | Han people, Putonghua (Chinese); Uighur, Hui, Manchu, Tibetan minorities | Largely Japanese; small Ainu minority; forced Korean labour under colonial rule |
| Staple food | Regional: rice (south/east), wheat (north), spice (Szechuan) | Rice and fish (sashimi/sushi); no animal-rearing tradition |
2 Old Japan: The Tokugawa Order
2.1 Shoguns, Daimyo and Samurai
An emperor had ruled Japan from Kyoto, but by the twelfth century the imperial court had lost power to shoguns, who ruled in the emperor’s name. From 1603 to 1867, the position of shogun was held by the Tokugawa family (the Edo shogunate). The country was divided into over 250 domains under the rule of lords called daimyo. The shogun controlled the domainal lords by ordering them to stay at the capital, Edo (modern Tokyo), for long periods, so they could not build up a threat; he also controlled the major cities and mines. The samurai, the warrior class, were the ruling elite who served the shoguns and daimyo.
The samurai monopoly on arms
The peasantry was disarmed; only samurai could carry swords. This ensured peace and order, ending the frequent wars of earlier centuries.
Daimyo tied to their capitals
Daimyo were ordered to live in the capitals of their own domains, each with a large degree of local autonomy.
Land surveys
Surveys identified landowners and taxpayers and graded land productivity, to build a stable revenue base for the state.
These three late-sixteenth-century changes laid the pattern for the future. By the mid-seventeenth century, the daimyo’s capitals had grown so large that Japan had the most populated city in the world, Edo, plus two other large cities, Osaka and Kyoto, and at least half a dozen castle-towns with populations over 50,000. Most European countries at the time had only one large city. This growth created a commercial economy with real financial and credit systems, where a person’s merit began to matter more than their inherited status. A vibrant urban culture blossomed: merchants patronised theatre and the arts, and reading became so popular that people in Edo could “rent” a book for the price of a bowl of noodles.
A fictionalised diary of the Heian court, written by Murasaki Shikibu, the Tale of the Genji became the central work of fiction in Japanese literature. That period saw the emergence of many women writers, like Murasaki, who wrote in the Japanese script, while men wrote in the Chinese script used for education and government. The novel depicts the romantic life of Prince Genji and shows the independence women had in choosing their husbands and living their own lives.
2.2 The Silk Economy Before Perry
Japan was considered rich because it imported luxury goods, silk from China and textiles from India, but paying for these in gold and silver strained the economy. This led the Tokugawa to restrict the export of precious metals, and to develop the silk industry in Nishijin, Kyoto, to cut imports; Nishijin silk came to be known as the best in the world. The increased use of money and a stock market in rice show the economy was developing in new ways well before Perry ever arrived. At the same time, the study of ancient Japanese literature, such as the Tale of the Genji and the myths of the emperor’s descent from the Sun Goddess, led people to question the degree of Chinese cultural influence and to look for a distinct Japanese essence.
3 The Meiji Restoration
3.1 Perry’s “Black Ships” and the Fall of the Shogun
Internal discontent coincided with growing demands for trade and diplomatic relations. In 1853, the USA sent Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) to Japan to demand a treaty permitting trade and diplomatic relations, which Japan signed the following year, in 1854. The USA wanted Japan on the route to the Chinese market, and its whaling ships needed a place to refuel; before this, Holland was the only Western country trading with Japan.
What the Japanese called “black ships” (tar sealed the wood joints) were depicted in paintings and cartoons showing the strange foreigners and their habits, and became a powerful symbol of Japan’s “opening”. Perry’s arrival had an important effect on Japanese politics: the emperor, who till then had little political power, re-emerged as an important figure. In 1868, a movement forcibly removed the shogun from power and brought the Emperor to Edo, which was made the capital and renamed Tokyo (“eastern capital”). This is the Meiji Restoration.
The Meiji Restoration (1868) was the movement that forcibly removed the Tokugawa shogun from power and restored real political authority to the emperor, whose capital was moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo. It is the turning point that made Japan’s rapid modernisation possible.
3.2 “Rich Country, Strong Army”
Officials and people were aware that European countries were building colonial empires in India and elsewhere, and news of China’s defeat by the British was flowing in, even reaching popular plays, so there was a real fear that Japan might become a colony too. Some scholars wanted to learn from new European ideas, others wanted to exclude Europeans while still adopting their technology, and some argued for a gradual, limited “opening”. The government settled on a policy captured in a single slogan.
Fukoku kyohei (“rich country, strong army”) was the Meiji government’s guiding slogan. It meant Japan had to build both a strong economy and a strong army, or else face the same fate as India, being subjugated by a foreign power. This required creating a sense of nationhood, and turning subjects into citizens.
At the same time, the government built what it called the “emperor system”: the emperor as part of a system, along with the bureaucracy and the military, that together exercised power. Officials were sent to study European monarchies as a model. The Emperor was treated with reverence, as a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, but was also shown as the leader of Westernisation: his birthday became a national holiday, he wore Western-style military uniforms, and edicts in his name set up modern institutions. The Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) urged people to pursue learning and advance the public good.
4 Building Modern Japan
4.1 A New School System
A new school system began to be built from the 1870s. Schooling was compulsory for boys and girls and was almost universal by 1910, with minimal tuition fees. The curriculum was based on Western models but, from the 1870s, stressed loyalty and the study of Japanese history alongside modern ideas. The ministry of education controlled the curriculum, textbook selection and teacher training; a compulsory “moral culture” course urged children to revere their parents, be loyal to the nation and become good citizens.
The Japanese had borrowed their written script from Chinese in the sixth century, but since the two languages differ greatly, the Japanese developed two phonetic alphabets, hiragana and katakana, used alongside Chinese characters (kanji). Hiragana is considered feminine because it was used by many women writers of the Heian period, like Murasaki. In the 1880s it was suggested Japan adopt a fully phonetic script, or even a European language; neither was done.
4.2 Administration, Military and the Limits of Democracy
To integrate the nation, the Meiji government imposed a new administrative structure over the old village and domain boundaries. Each administrative unit had to fund local schools and health facilities and serve as a military recruitment centre; all young men over twenty had to complete military service. A legal system regulated the formation of political groups, controlled meetings and imposed censorship, and faced opposition at every step.
Critically, the military and the bureaucracy were placed under the direct command of the emperor, not the elected government, so they stayed outside civilian control even after a constitution was enacted. This tension between a democratic constitution and a modern, emperor-controlled army had far-reaching consequences: the army pressed for an aggressive foreign policy, which led to wars with China and Russia (Japan won both), while popular demand for greater democracy was often in direct opposition to the government’s aggressive policies.
Do not write that the Meiji Constitution made Japan a full democracy. It created a Diet with limited powers under a restricted franchise, and the army and navy answered directly to the emperor, not to the elected government, even after 1889. This is exactly why civilian, popularly elected cabinets (1918-31) could later lose power to national-unity cabinets and, eventually, to the military.
4.3 Modernising the Economy
Funds for the Meiji reforms came from an agricultural tax. Japan’s first railway line, between Tokyo and the port of Yokohama, was built in 1870-72. Textile machinery was imported from Europe, foreign technicians trained workers and taught in schools and universities, and Japanese students were sent abroad. In 1872, modern banking institutions were launched. Companies like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were helped through subsidies and tax benefits to become major shipbuilders, so that Japanese trade was carried in Japanese ships from then on.
Zaibatsu were large Japanese business organisations controlled by individual families (such as Mitsubishi and Sumitomo). They dominated the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until after the Second World War, when the US Occupation attempted to dismantle them.
Japan’s population grew from 35 million in 1872 to 55 million in 1920. To reduce population pressure, the government encouraged migration, first to the northern island of Hokkaido, home of the indigenous Ainu people, and then to Hawaii, Brazil and Japan’s growing colonial empire. Industry pulled people into towns: 21 per cent of the population lived in cities by 1925, rising to 32 per cent (22.5 million) by 1935.
4.4 Industrial Workers
The number of people in manufacturing grew from 700,000 in 1870 to 4 million in 1913, most working in tiny units of under five people with no machinery. Over half of all workers in modern factories were women, and it was women who organised Japan’s first modern strike, in 1886; men only began outnumbering women workers in the 1930s. Larger factories (100+ workers) grew from just over 1,000 in 1909 to over 4,000 by the 1930s, yet even in 1940 more than 550,000 tiny workshops still employed fewer than five people each. This kept a family-centred ideology alive, just as nationalism was sustained by a strong patriarchal system under an emperor who was treated like a family patriarch.
The self-taught son of a farmer, Tanaka Shozo rose to become a major political figure. He took part in the Popular Rights Movement of the 1880s, which demanded constitutional government, and was elected to the first Diet. He believed ordinary people should not be sacrificed for industrial progress. When the Ashio copper mine polluted the Watarase river, ruining 100 square miles of farmland and affecting a thousand families, Tanaka led the first agitation against industrial pollution in Japan (1897, 800 villagers, a mass protest), forcing the government to act; by 1904 harvests were normal again.
5 Nationalism, War and Recovery
5.1 The Diet and Aggressive Nationalism
The Meiji constitution rested on a restricted franchise and created a Diet with limited powers.
The Diet was the Japanese parliament created by the Meiji Constitution (1889). Its name comes from the German word for parliament, reflecting the strong influence of German legal ideas on Japan’s constitution.
Between 1918 and 1931, popularly elected prime ministers formed cabinets, but power then passed to national-unity cabinets formed across party lines. From 1890, the emperor’s role as commander of the forces was interpreted to mean the army and navy had independent control, outside elected government. In 1899, the prime minister ordered that only serving generals and admirals could become ministers, strengthening the military further; this, together with Japan’s expanding colonial empire, was tied to a fear that Japan was at the mercy of the Western powers, a fear used to silence opposition to military spending and expansion.
5.2 “Westernisation” and “Tradition”
Successive generations of Japanese intellectuals argued over Japan’s relationship with the West.
Born to a poor samurai family, Fukuzawa studied Dutch and Western sciences, then English, and went to the USA in 1860 as a translator. He founded the school that is today Keio University, and was a core member of the Meirokusha, a society promoting Western learning. In The Encouragement to Learning (1872-76) he wrote, “All that Japan has to be proud of is its scenery,” and argued that Japan needed not just modern factories but the “spirit of civilisation” itself. His phrase for this total commitment to the West was “expel Asia”: Japan must shed its “Asian” characteristics. His guiding principle was: “Heaven did not create men above men, nor set men below men.”
The next generation pushed back. The philosopher Miyake Setsurei (1860-1945) argued each nation must develop its own special talents for world civilisation: “To devote oneself to one’s country is to devote oneself to the world.” Ueki Emori (1857-1892), a Popular Rights Movement leader, admired the French Revolution’s ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty and wanted a liberal education for every individual: “Freedom is more precious than order.” Some even demanded voting rights for women. This pressure led the government to announce a constitution.
5.3 Daily Life and the “Modern Girl”
The old patriarchal household, many generations under one head of family, gave way as people grew more affluent to a new ideal: the nuclear family, called homu (from the English “home”), with husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker. This created demand for new domestic goods, new entertainment and new housing; in the 1920s, cheap housing needed just 200 yen down and 12 yen a month for ten years, at a time when a bank employee earned 40 yen a month.
Moga, short for “modern girl”, represented the coming together of gender equality, cosmopolitan culture and a developed economy in 1920s Japan. New middle-class families enjoyed electric trams, public parks (from 1878), department stores and “Ginbura” (strolling aimlessly through Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district).
The first radio stations opened in 1925. Films began in 1899, and soon a dozen companies were making hundreds of films a year; the actress Matsui Sumako became a national star playing Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It was a period of great vitality and questioning of traditional social and political norms.
5.4 “Overcoming Modernity” and the Road to War
State-centred nationalism reached its peak in the 1930s-40s, as Japan launched wars to extend its empire in China and the rest of Asia, merging into the Second World War after Japan attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor. This period saw tighter social control, the repression of dissidents, and patriotic societies (many of them women’s organisations) supporting the war.
A 1943 symposium, “Overcoming Modernity”, debated Japan’s dilemma: how to fight the West while remaining modern. The philosopher Nishitani Keiji defined “modern” as the unity of three Western streams of thought, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the rise of natural science, and argued that Japan’s own “moral energy” had let it escape colonisation, and it was Japan’s duty to build a new world order, a “Greater East Asia”.
5.5 After Defeat: Re-emerging as a Global Economic Power
Japan’s colonial empire ended with defeat by the Allied forces; nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the US-led Occupation (1945-47), Japan was demilitarised, and a new constitution was introduced with Article 9, the “no war clause”, renouncing war as an instrument of state policy. Agrarian reforms, the re-establishment of trade unions, and an attempt to dismantle the zaibatsu followed. Political parties were revived, and at the first post-war elections, in 1946, women voted for the first time.
The rapid rebuilding of the economy was called a post-war “miracle”, but it was rooted in Japan’s long history of popular struggle and intellectual engagement with broadening political participation, together with US support. The 1960s also saw the growth of civil-society movements against unregulated industrialisation’s toll on health and the environment: cadmium poisoning, and mercury poisoning at Minamata, led to grass-roots demands for recognition and compensation that forced government action and new environmental laws; from the mid-1980s Japan enacted some of the world’s strictest environmental controls.
6 Qing China in Decline
6.1 Three Chinese Responses to Crisis
The modern history of China revolves around one question: how to regain sovereignty, end foreign humiliation, and bring about equality and development. Chinese debates were shaped by three groups: early reformers such as Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), who tried to use traditional ideas in new ways; republican revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, inspired by Japan and the West; and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which wanted to end age-old inequalities and drive out foreigners.
6.2 The Opium War and the Triangular Trade
China’s first encounter with the West came in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, when Jesuit missionaries introduced astronomy and mathematics; the impact was limited at first, but it set events in motion that gathered pace in the nineteenth century, when Britain used force to expand its opium trade, leading to the First Opium War (1839-42). This undermined the ruling Qing dynasty and strengthened demands for reform.
The triangular trade was the trade pattern that led to the Opium War. China’s tea, silk and porcelain were in high demand, but Western goods found no market in China, so the West had to pay in silver, straining its finances. The East India Company solved this by growing opium in India and selling it in China; the silver it earned there paid for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain, which were then sold in Britain.
6.3 Reformers, Poland, and the Question of India
Qing reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao saw the need to build a modern administrative system, a new army, an education system and local assemblies for constitutional government, to protect China from colonisation. The negative example of colonised countries worked powerfully on Chinese thinkers: the eighteenth-century partition of Poland became so well known that by the late 1890s “to Poland us” (bolan wo) was used as a verb. India was cited too. In 1903, Liang Qichao wrote that India was “a country that was destroyed by a non-country that is the East India Company,” and criticised Indians for being subservient to the British, since ordinary Chinese could see British forces using Indian soldiers in wars against China.
6.4 Confucianism Questioned, and the Old Examination System Abolished
Confucianism, developed from the teachings of Confucius (551-479 BCE) and his disciples, was concerned with good conduct, practical wisdom and proper social relationships. It shaped Chinese social standards and political theory for over two thousand years, but by the late nineteenth century it was increasingly seen as a barrier to new ideas.
Students were sent to Japan, Britain and France to study modern subjects; many who went to Japan in the 1890s later became leading republicans. The Chinese even borrowed Japanese translations of European words like “justice”, “rights” and “revolution”, a reversal of the older relationship, because both languages used the same ideographic script. In 1905, just after the Russo-Japanese war fought on Chinese soil, the centuries-old Chinese examination system was abolished.
Entry to China’s elite ruling class (about 1.1 million people till 1850) was largely through an examination requiring an “eight-legged essay” (pa-ku wen) in classical Chinese. Held twice every three years, only 1-2 per cent of candidates passed the first level, usually around age 24. Before 1850 there were about 526,869 civil and 212,330 military degree-holders nationwide, but only 27,000 official positions existed, so many degree-holders had no jobs. The exam demanded only literary skill and was blamed for blocking the growth of science and technology; it was abolished in 1905 as irrelevant to the modern world.
7 Republic, Revolution and the CCP
7.1 Sun Yat-sen and the Republic of 1911
The Manchu (Qing) empire was overthrown and a republic established in 1911 under Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), unanimously regarded as the founder of modern China. Born to a poor family, he studied in missionary schools, where he learned of democracy and Christianity, and trained in medicine before turning to politics.
Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles (San min chui) were: nationalism (overthrowing the Manchu, seen as a foreign dynasty, and other foreign imperialists), democracy (establishing democratic government), and socialism (regulating capital and equalising landholdings).
On 4 May 1919, an angry demonstration in Beijing protested the post-war peace conference’s decisions: despite being an ally of the victorious side, China did not get back territories seized from it. This May Fourth Movement galvanised a whole generation to attack tradition and call for saving China through science, democracy and nationalism, and to advocate reforms such as simpler written language, ending foot-binding and marriage inequality, and economic development.
7.2 The Guomindang and Chiang Kai-shek
The Guomindang (the National People’s Party) built its political philosophy on Sun Yat-sen’s ideas, identifying clothing, food, housing and transportation as the “four great needs”. After Sun’s death, Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) led it, launching a military campaign to control regional “warlords” and eliminate the communists.
Chiang advocated a secular, “this-worldly” Confucianism, but also militarised the nation, telling people they must develop a “habit and instinct for unified behaviour”. He prescribed women’s role as confined to the household, defined by “chastity, appearance, speech and work”; even hemline lengths were regulated. The Guomindang’s social base was urban: Shanghai’s industrial working class reached 500,000 by 1919, though few worked in modern industries like shipbuilding; most were “petty urbanites” (xiao shimin), traders and shopkeepers, earning low wages under bad conditions. Schools and universities spread (Peking University, 1902), and journalism grew, exemplified by Life Weekly, whose circulation rose from 2,000 (1926) to 200,000 (1933).
Despite its ambitions, the Guomindang failed to unite the country: its social base was too narrow, and it never carried out Sun Yat-sen’s promised land and capital reforms, ignoring the peasantry and rising inequality, choosing military order over addressing people’s real problems.
7.3 Mao Zedong and the Rise of the CCP
The CCP was founded in 1921, soon after the Russian Revolution.
The Comintern (Third International), established by Lenin and Trotsky in March 1918, aimed to help bring about a world government that would end exploitation. It supported communist parties worldwide on the traditional Marxist idea that revolution would come from the urban working class, and was dissolved in 1943.
Mao Zedong (1893-1976) took a different path from the Comintern’s urban strategy, basing his revolutionary programme on the peasantry instead, which ultimately made the CCP powerful enough to defeat the Guomindang. From 1928 to 1934, Mao’s base in the Jiangxi mountains organised a peasants’ council through the confiscation and redistribution of land; he stressed an independent government and army, supported rural women’s associations, and promulgated a new marriage law that forbade arranged marriages and simplified divorce.
The Long March (1934-35) was the CCP’s 6,000-mile retreat from the Guomindang’s blockade of its Jiangxi base to a new base at Yanan, in Shanxi. There the Party developed its programme to end warlordism, carry out land reform and fight foreign imperialism, which won it a strong social base among the peasantry.
During the difficult war years, the CCP and the Guomindang worked together against the Japanese invasion (from 1937), but once the war ended the CCP established itself in power and defeated the Guomindang.
8 China Under Communist Rule
8.1 The New Democracy and the Great Leap Forward
The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, based on the principle of “New Democracy”, an alliance of all social classes, unlike the Soviet Union’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Critical parts of the economy came under government control, and private enterprise and land ownership were gradually ended, a programme that lasted till 1953, when the government declared it would launch socialist transformation.
The Great Leap Forward (1958) was a policy to industrialise China rapidly: people were encouraged to set up backyard steel furnaces, and rural land was organised into collectively owned and cultivated people’s communes. By 1958 there were 26,000 communes covering 98 per cent of the farm population, but the backyard steel produced was industrially unusable.
Mao worked to create a “socialist man” with five loves: fatherland, people, labour, science and public property, backed by mass organisations (the All-China Democratic Women’s Federation alone had 76 million members). By 1953-54, however, leaders like Liu Shaochi (1896-1969) and Deng Xiaoping (1904-97) were already pushing for more attention to industrial organisation, since the commune system was not working efficiently.
8.2 The Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (launched by Mao in 1965/66) was a campaign against “old culture, old customs and old habits”, led by the Red Guards (mainly students and the army). Ideological loyalty was valued over professional expertise; students and professionals were sent to the countryside to “learn from the masses”, and denunciations and slogans replaced rational debate.
The Cultural Revolution began a period of turmoil that weakened the Party and badly disrupted the economy and education system. From the late 1960s the tide slowly turned, and by 1975 the Party had refocused on social discipline and building an industrial economy.
8.3 Reforms from 1978, and Tiananmen Square
After the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping kept Party control strong while introducing a socialist market economy.
The Four Modernisations, declared the Party’s goal in 1978, were to develop science, industry, agriculture and defence. Debate was allowed as long as the Party itself was not questioned.
In this newly open climate, a 5 December 1978 wall-poster titled “The Fifth Modernisation” argued that without democracy, the other four modernisations would come to nothing, and criticised the CCP for not solving poverty or ending sexual exploitation. These demands were suppressed, but in 1989, on the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, intellectuals again called for greater openness. Student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, were brutally repressed, a crackdown strongly condemned around the world.
Debate since the reforms has continued: the dominant Party view favours strong political control alongside economic liberalisation and integration into the world market, while critics point to rising inequality between social groups, regions, and men and women, and note a growing revival of “traditional” ideas like Confucianism.
9 Taiwan and Korea
9.1 The Story of Taiwan
Defeated by the CCP, Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949 with over US$300 million in gold reserves, establishing the “Republic of China” there. Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since China ceded it after the 1894-95 war; the Cairo Declaration (1943) restored its sovereignty to China. After brutally suppressing demonstrations in February 1947, the Guomindang under Chiang ran a repressive government that forbade political opposition and excluded local Taiwanese from power, but it also carried out land reforms that raised productivity and modernised the economy: by 1973 Taiwan had Asia’s second-highest GNP, after Japan, with the rich-poor gap steadily narrowing.
Taiwan’s transformation into a democracy began slowly after Chiang’s death (1975) and gathered pace when martial law was lifted in 1987 and opposition parties were legalised, bringing local Taiwanese to power through free elections. Since Taiwan is considered part of China, most countries maintain only trade missions there, not full embassies, though “Cross-Strait” trade, investment and travel have grown steadily easier.
9.2 The Story of Korea: Colonisation to Division
In the late nineteenth century, Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) attempted its own modernisation reforms while facing growing pressure from China, Japan and the West. Imperial Japan annexed Korea as a colony in 1910, ending the 500-year-old dynasty; Koreans resisted Japan’s cultural suppression and forced assimilation with demonstrations and a provisional government. Colonial rule ended after 35 years, in August 1945, with Japan’s WWII defeat. Korea was then temporarily divided along the 38th parallel (Soviets in the North, the UN/US in the South); this division became permanent when separate governments were set up in North and South in 1948.
9.3 War, Dictatorship and Rapid Growth
The Korean War (June 1950 – July 1953), a Cold War proxy war with the South backed by US-led UN forces and the North by communist China, ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty; Korea remains divided. The war destroyed colonial-era industry and left South Korea dependent on US aid. President Syngman Rhee illegally extended his rule twice, until the rigged-election protests of the April Revolution (1960) forced his resignation. In May 1961, General Park Chung-hee seized power in a military coup.
Elected president in 1963, Park adopted a state-led, export-oriented economic policy: five-year plans favoured large firms and shifted Korea from import substitution to exports, first light industries like textiles, then, from the late 1960s, heavy and chemical industries like steel and shipbuilding.
The Saemaul (New Village) Movement (1970) mobilised Korea’s rural population to modernise agriculture, aiming to change people’s spirit from passive to active and hopeful. It later expanded to urban and industrial neighbourhoods, and Korea now shares this model with developing countries.
Korea’s growth also rested on trained bureaucrats, a literate labour force, an open economy absorbing foreign technology, foreign investment, high domestic savings, and remittances from overseas Korean workers. But this growth funded Park’s authoritarian power: he revised the constitution for a third term (1971), and in October 1972 declared the Yusin Constitution, making the presidency permanent and giving the president near-total authority, including the right to repeal any law as an “emergency measure”. Amid the 1979 oil crisis and continuing protests, Park was assassinated in October 1979.
9.4 Democratisation and the IMF Crisis
Economic growth accelerated under Chun (1.7% in 1980 to 13.2% by 1983), but rising education and urbanisation raised political awareness, and the June 1987 exposure of a student’s death by torture triggered the mass June Democracy Movement, forcing a constitutional revision to allow direct presidential elections. Roh Tae-woo won the first such election (1987); Kim Young-sam became the first civilian president in 1992.
Export-led growth continued, and Korea joined the OECD in 1996, but trade deficits and reckless conglomerate borrowing led to a foreign-currency crisis in 1997, resolved through emergency IMF support; citizens even contributed personal gold to loan repayment through the Gold Collection Movement. Kim Dae-jung’s election that December marked Korea’s first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition leader. Three more peaceful transfers followed, ending with Park Geun-hye’s impeachment (2017, after the 2016 “candlelight protests”) and Moon Jae-in’s election. The book’s own conclusion: Korean democracy owes a debt to economic development, but it was the citizens’ elevated political awareness that played the lead role in advancing it.
Question 5 asks specifically how Korea dealt with the 1997 currency crisis. Give three things: (1) emergency financial support from the IMF, (2) the citizen-led Gold Collection Movement to help repay foreign loans, and (3) joining the OECD the year before (1996) as part of opening the economy further.
10 Two Roads to Modernisation
Industrial societies, far from becoming like each other, found their own separate paths to becoming modern. Japan retained its independence and used traditional skills and practices in new ways, but its elite-driven modernisation also produced an aggressive nationalism, a regime that stifled dissent, and a colonial empire that left a legacy of regional hatred. China’s path was very different: foreign imperialism combined with a weak, hesitant Qing dynasty to break down political and social order, causing immense misery through warlordism, civil war and Japanese invasion.
10.1 The two paths side by side
Japan’s Path
- Modernisation led from the top, by the existing elite around the emperor
- Traditional institutions creatively reused, not abandoned (e.g. the “emperor system”, a Meiji school system that taught loyalty)
- Ended in an aggressive colonial empire, and defeat in the Second World War
- Post-war US Occupation, not a revolution, brought real democratisation
China’s Path
- Modernisation came through revolution, after decades of foreign humiliation and civil war
- The CCP fought to end tradition itself, seen as keeping the masses poor and women subjugated
- Built a highly centralised state even while promising “power to the people”
- Removed old inequalities and spread education, but kept tight one-party political control even after economic reform
It is important to see that Japan’s transformation was not simply reviving old traditions, or preserving them unchanged, but creatively using them in new ways: the Meiji school system was modelled on Europe and America, but its real purpose was to make loyal citizens, with a compulsory course on loyalty to the emperor. China’s Communist programme, similarly, promised liberation and equality but its repressive political system often turned those ideals into slogans to manage the people; yet it also genuinely removed centuries-old inequalities. Today, both countries continue to wrestle with the same underlying question this chapter poses: how to develop as a modern nation while deciding what to keep of an older heritage.
10.1 Timeline: Japan and China Side by Side
| Year | Japan | China |
|---|---|---|
| 1603 | Tokugawa Ieyasu establishes the Edo shogunate | 1644-1911: Qing dynasty |
| 1630 | Japan closes the country to Western powers except restricted Dutch trade | |
| 1839-60 | Two Opium Wars | |
| 1854 | Japan-USA Treaty of Peace ends Japan’s seclusion | |
| 1868 | Restoration of Meiji | |
| 1872 | Compulsory education; first railway line (Tokyo-Yokohama) | |
| 1889 | Meiji Constitution enacted | |
| 1894-95 | War between Japan and China | |
| 1904-05 | War between Japan and Russia | |
| 1910 | Korea annexed, a colony till 1945 | |
| 1912 | Sun Yat-sen founds the Guomindang | |
| 1919 | May Fourth Movement | |
| 1921 | CCP founded | |
| 1925 | Universal male suffrage | |
| 1926-49 | Civil wars in China | |
| 1931 | Japan’s invasion of China | |
| 1934 | The Long March | |
| 1941-45 | The Pacific War | |
| 1945 | Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki | |
| 1946-52 | US-led Occupation; reforms to democratise and demilitarise Japan | |
| 1949 | People’s Republic of China established; Chiang Kai-shek founds the Republic of China in Taiwan | |
| 1956 | Japan becomes a member of the United Nations | |
| 1962 | China attacks India over a border dispute | |
| 1964 | Olympic Games in Tokyo, the first time in Asia | |
| 1966 | Cultural Revolution | |
| 1976 | Death of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai | |
| 1997 | Hong Kong returned to China by Britain |
- China dominated East Asia in 1800; within decades, Japan modernised and colonised Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910), while China fell into civil war and foreign control
- Old Japan: shoguns (Tokugawa, 1603-1867) ruled through daimyo and samurai; a commercial economy and Nishijin silk industry already existed before Perry
- Perry (1853) forced Japan open; the 1868 Meiji Restoration removed the shogun; the slogan was fukoku kyohei, “rich country, strong army”
- Meiji Japan built compulsory schools, a modern army under the emperor’s direct command (not the Diet), a railway (1870-72), and zaibatsu-led industry
- Aggressive nationalism (Diet with limited power, military independent of civilian control) led to wars with China (1894-95) and Russia (1904-05), and later WWII
- Post-war: US Occupation (1945-47), Article 9, zaibatsu dismantling, women vote (1946); Japan’s post-war “miracle” and the 1964 Olympics
- China: the Opium War (1839-42) and triangular trade weakened the Qing; Confucianism was questioned; the exam system was abolished in 1905
- Sun Yat-sen’s Republic (1911), Three Principles, and the May Fourth Movement (1919) led to the Guomindang (Chiang Kai-shek) vs the CCP (Mao Zedong, peasant-based)
- Long March (1934-35) to Yanan; PRC established 1949; Great Leap Forward (1958); Cultural Revolution (1965/66); Deng’s Four Modernisations (1978) and Tiananmen (1989)
- Taiwan: Chiang’s Guomindang fled there in 1949, ran an authoritarian but land-reforming state, democratised from 1987
- Korea: annexed by Japan 1910, divided 1948, Korean War 1950-53, Park Chung-hee’s export-led growth and the Yusin Constitution, democratised 1987, IMF crisis 1997
- Two Roads: Japan modernised top-down and kept independence but built an aggressive empire; China modernised through revolution and kept centralised Party control
- Can I list the three late-16th-century Tokugawa changes that set up Japan’s later growth?
- Can I explain fukoku kyohei and give two things it led the government to do?
- Can I explain why the military stayed outside civilian control even after 1889?
- Can I describe the triangular trade in one sentence?
- Can I name all Three Principles and match each to what it meant?
- Can I explain why Mao’s peasant-based strategy succeeded where the Comintern’s urban strategy might not have?
- Can I give the Four Modernisations, and say what the “Fifth Modernisation” poster demanded?
- Can I trace Korea from Park Chung-hee’s coup (1961) to Moon Jae-in’s election (2017) in five events?
- Can I state Japan’s and China’s paths to modernisation as one contrast each?
- 1 markWho was sent by the USA in 1853 to force Japan to open its ports?
- 1 markWhat does the slogan “fukoku kyohei” mean?
- 1 markName the large family-controlled business houses that dominated Japan’s economy till after WWII.
- 1 markIn which year was the First Opium War fought?
- 1 markWho is unanimously regarded as the founder of modern China?
- 1 markIn which year was the Chinese Communist Party founded?
- 1 markWhat were the Four Modernisations of 1978?
- 1 markWhat was the Yusin Constitution (Korea, 1972)?
- 3 marksWhat were the major developments before the Meiji restoration that made it possible for Japan to modernise rapidly? (NCERT)
- 3 marksHow did the Qing dynasty try to meet the challenge posed by the Western powers? (NCERT)
- 3 marksWhat were Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles? (NCERT)
- 2 marksExplain the “triangular trade” between Britain, India and China.
- 3 marksWhy was the Chinese examination system abolished in 1905?
- 2 marksWhat was the Long March, and why did the CCP undertake it?
- 3 marksHow did Mao Zedong’s approach to revolution differ from the Comintern’s traditional Marxist view?
- 2 marksWhat was the Gwangju Democratisation Movement?
- 5 marksDiscuss how daily life was transformed as Japan developed. (NCERT)
- 5 marksDid Japan’s policy of rapid industrialisation lead to wars with its neighbours and destruction of the environment? (NCERT)
- 5 marksDo you think Mao Zedong and the CCP were successful in liberating China and laying the basis for its current success? (NCERT)
- 5 marksHow did Korea deal with the foreign currency crisis in 1997? (NCERT)
- 5 marksDid economic growth in South Korea contribute to its democratisation? (NCERT)
- 5 marksCompare the paths Japan and China took to modernisation, and explain why they ended up so different.
- 1 markThe Meiji Restoration took place in:
(a) 1853(b) 1868
(c) 1889(d) 1905 - 1 markThe Meiji-era slogan “fukoku kyohei” means:
(a) Expel Asia(b) Overcome modernity
(c) Rich country, strong army(d) Learn from the West - 1 markWhich company grew into a major shipbuilder with Meiji government support?
(a) Toyota(b) Mitsubishi
(c) Sony(d) Honda - 1 markThe First Opium War was fought between:
(a) Britain and China(b) Japan and China
(c) Britain and Japan(d) Russia and China - 1 markThe Chinese examination system was finally abolished in:
(a) 1839(b) 1894
(c) 1905(d) 1911 - 1 markMao Zedong based his revolutionary strategy on:
(a) The urban working class(b) The peasantry
(c) The army alone(d) Foreign intervention - 1 markThe People’s Republic of China was established in:
(a) 1911(b) 1934
(c) 1949(d) 1958 - 1 markWhich Korean movement mobilised rural areas to modernise agriculture from 1970?
(a) The April Revolution(b) The Gold Collection Movement
(c) The Saemaul Movement(d) The June Democracy Movement
Reason (R): The army and navy were placed under the direct command of the emperor and, from 1890, were interpreted to have independent control outside civilian government.
Reason (R): Mao instead based his revolutionary programme on the peasantry, organising land redistribution from bases like Jiangxi and, later, Yanan.
Reason (R): Martial law was only lifted and opposition parties legalised in 1987, after which Taiwan’s democratic transformation gathered real momentum.