 You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that and... Hey, it's Mr. Ruchov again. So far in this unit, we've looked at the physical geography of East Asia, and we looked at some of the historical events that have shaped the region's culture. In this lesson, we're going to look at the countries today and some of the modern issues that they are facing. So let's start by looking at the population in the region. And in China, there are lots of people. At 1.4 billion, China is the most populated country in the world. That's 100 million more than India, which is number two, and over 100 million people in the United States, which is number three in the world. But unlike India and South Asia, outside of Japan, the other countries are not as populated. And while Japan does have 126 million people, it doesn't even get into the top 10 list in the world. Now, what is interesting about China is that while it has four times the population, China is still about the same size as the continental United States. This means it also has four times the population of the United States. However, each of the other countries in East Asia also have higher population densities, each country that is, except for Mongolia, who averages just five people per square mile. This makes Mongolia the least densely populated country in the world. And there are several reasons for this. First of all, being landlocked to center Asia means that Mongolia couldn't be settled by ocean travelers. And in fact, the Gobi Desert to the south further isolates it from anyone from the ocean. To the north is eastern Russia, which is sparsely populated as well. Perhaps the biggest reason is that the terrain and the climate is not good for farming. As this map shows, extremely little land is farmed in Mongolia. Now, if you don't have much food, you're not going to have very many people. But you do have lots of people in China. And one of the most controversial policies that China enacted was something called the One Child Policy. Before this policy, though, there were other policies in China that had an impact upon the population. After the Chinese nationalists were driven to Taiwan, Mao Zedong and the communists took over in China. Mao then began to transform China into a communist country and took over the country's industries. In 1958, Mao took over the farms in what was known as the Great Leap Forward, which really wasn't a great leap. Now, instead of farmers farming their own fields, the government now owned these lands and farmed them by communes. Now, communes were small societies of people who all lived together and worked together for the good of the state. Now, the government would press the leaders of these communes to increase the harvest fields and they would mandate that they use some unproven agricultural techniques. Now, unfortunately, these were horrible ideas and instead of actually increasing the amount of food raise, it actually meant that there were fewer crops. This was especially devastating as drought also slashed food production at the same time. However, many of these communes leaders would exaggerate how much food they raised in order to gain favor with the government. Now, the government in turn would take a percentage of this inflated yield to use in the cities. Now, let me give you an example of how this worked. Let's say that your commune leader tells the government that your commune of 100 people have raised 1,400 bushels of rice. The feed of 100 people for a year takes about 700 bushels of rice. So, the government would take 700, leaving 700 bushels for the people to live on. However, your commune actually didn't raise 1400 as a commune leader has actually told the government. In reality, you only raised 1,000 bushels. Now, the government still takes 700 bushels, but now your commune is only left with 300 bushels, which is half what is required for those 100 people to survive. In the end, lots of people in China did not survive the great leap forward. In fact, it is estimated in these three years, anywhere between 22 to 55 million Chinese would die of starvation. Instead of asking for the world to help, the Chinese government hid all of this from the world in order to save face or to avoid embarrassment. Fortunately, I can think of no other time in recent history in which the Chinese have had a natural disaster and have tried to hide it from the world. Oh, wait, never mind. Now, the devastating effects of the great leap forward causes many Chinese to lose faith in the government and Mao Zedong. So in 1966, Mao launches the Great Poletarian Cultural Revolution. Now, for the next 10 years in China, the government would attempt to purge the country of those who were not loyal to the communist regime. Intellectuals in the country were targeted to be imprisoned or sent off to be re-educated, and in fact, 80% of the professors at the University of Beijing were arrested during this time. The government also set out to educate everyone on what it was to be a good communist. A book of Mao Zedong's thoughts and beliefs, known as the Little Red Book, was required reading by all Chinese, and millions and millions of this book was printed and distributed across the country. Now, to assist this revolution, the government formed youth groups known as the Red Guards that go out and eliminate the four old, essentially violently destroying old traditions so Mao's communism would endure. Now, one of the teachings in Mao during the time was that the people of China was the strength of the country, therefore having more people meant more strength. However, by the 1970s, the Chinese government realized that his population was becoming a liability and is set out on its first population control program known as later, longer, and fewer. It figured that by mandating people wait later in life to marry and then to be able to lengthen the gap between each of your children, you would have a lower growth rate in the country. Now, while this did begin to lower the growth rate, in 1979 the Chinese instituted the One Child Policy and especially the urban areas Chinese families were only allowed to have one child. There were exceptions to ethnic minorities and those who lived in the rural areas, they could have up to two children. But violations of this law wouldn't find you being fined up to two years' pay. But the government also made promises that if China would slow its population, it would be able to provide better services for all of its people. After 35 years, the government finally ended the One Child Policy in 2015. China now has a two-child policy. Some estimates report that 400 million fewer people were born during this time, although many analysts disagree with this number arguing that the birth rate was actually already declining. But we know that the birth rate in fertility did dramatically drop from 2.8 in 1970 to just 1.5 in 2000. But another impact that wasn't planned was the effect it would have on the population in terms of the number of males and females. Now, it's hard to see its effect in the population pyramid. So here I have graph, the men and women on the same side, men in blue and women in pink. Here you can see there are more men and women born in each of the younger age groups. To make this clear yet, this graph shows the net difference between men and women. And while there are more older women in the older age groups, there are between 4 and 6 million more men than women in each of the younger groups. And all there are now 34 million more men than women, and this difference is mostly found between those under 30. Because of this, it is estimated that a quarter of young men today will never be able to find a woman to marry. Beyond potentially skewing the labor market to men than women, historically countries with a high gender imbalance would have higher crime rates, including rape and prostitution. And with such a low birth rate, China is becoming an older and older country. By 2029, it is estimated that China's population will begin shrinking. Now, a shrinking population is seen in many developing countries, but China isn't a developed country. Their shrinking population is artificial due to a policy, not development. Therefore, it has not created the social programs sufficiently to care for the millions and millions of future senior citizens. In other words, China isn't Japan. Japan has a fertility rate even lower than China, and with no increase in migration, each year Japan's population is shrinking by more than a quarter percent. A sizable percentage of Japan's population is already over 60 years old, yet unlike China, Japan is a fairly developed country, and not only is Japan's GDP per capita more than 2 times that of China, the HDI is also greatly higher. So, what created Japan's economic success? Well, despite its industry largely being bombed into rubble during World War II, it took several steps to be able to grow into the third largest economy in the world. First, right after the war, Japan made several political and economic reforms that made it easier to be able to do business and trade. Then, during the Korean War, it had lots of money coming in from the United States and U.N. countries as they were using Japan as a base of operations for the Korean War. With this foreign investment coming into the country, the government wisely guided the industry to produce high-quality, high-technology products that they could sell around the world. Now, another economic miracle lies across the sea of Japan in South Korea. In 1960, South Korea was really pretty much just an agricultural country with the GDP ranking between Pakistan and Colombia. But since that time, we've seen South Korea's economy grow into the 12th largest economy in the world, and like Japan, South Korea reformed its economic policies to be open to foreign trade. It also provided incentives to its companies to invest in innovation. In fact, South Korea leads the world in the amount of research and development it spends each year as a percentage of its economy. But while Japan and South Korea's economies have grown, Japan has skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. Today, while the United States still is the world's largest economy, China is the world's second largest economy, and 20% of all manufacturing in the world is found in China today. Now, China's economy has been launched due to its move towards capitalism. Ding Xiaoping would take over China in 1978, two years after Mao died. When a visit to Singapore, Ding realized that China could have the same economic success that Singapore was having, but China would have to change how it did things. China would then privatize farming, now farmers and not the state would own the farms. They also started allowing private business to be started and then established a number of special economic zones. In 1979, they established the first of these zones. These were essentially free market cities which the government reduced taxes, encouraged businesses to seek foreign investment and partnerships, and focused on export products to the world. China's economic boom has been due to these special economic zones, so incredible has their growth been that since 1990 almost 800 million people have been left out of poverty in China due to these capitalistic ideals, but is China capitalist? Sadly, no. China might best be described as a hybrid economic system that has islands of state controlled capitalism and a sea of communism. The government still has influence in the Chinese corporations in these zones with many Communist Party members on the Corporation Board of Directors. Outside of these zones, the government is still in full control of the economy. In fact, 40% of all industry in China is still state owned. Now, the government also takes steps to assist Chinese firms by devaluing the Chinese Yuan or its currency to make Chinese products artificially cheaper on foreign markets. Now, if China's government has so much power, what type of government is it? As all Communist countries have been, it is a totalitarian government. It only has one ruling party, the Communist Party, which has full control of the government. And now, in theory, there are eight other parties, but they are forbidden really to voice an opposition. In fact, several of them are really just supporting efforts to the Communist Party. Now, in 2018, the Communist Party took the step to remove term limits for its president, which essentially made Xiaoxing Ping as the president for life. And just in case the term president confuses anyone, I'll point out that pro-democracy protests were squashed in 1989. For nearly two months in that year, students held a protest occupying the historical Tiananmen Square. Now, the protests would end with 300,000 soldiers moving into Beijing and then later clearing the square of all the protesters. There were at least 10,000 protesters arrested and thousands and thousands were killed. After Tiananmen Square, any of the pro-democracy reform efforts that had been underway pretty much came to a grinding halt in 1989 as the government reassured its control over the people. Today, the nonprofit group Freedom House scores the freedom in China a miserable 10 out of 100. And political freedom is not only non-existent according to the organization, they actually gave China a negative 1 for the category. Now, while the Great Wall of China was built during the dynasties of China to be able to keep invaders like the Mongols out, the Chinese now have what many call the Great Firewall of China to keep information it doesn't want in China. Now, not only is censorship in China rampant with no independent press in China and frequently throwing foreign reporters out of the country, China now aggressively forbids over 8,000 websites and social network sites from being used and attempts to access these sites could actually result in prison sentences. Now, as we've discussed in previous lessons, in 1950, China invaded the country to Tibet and annexed it into the Chinese country. This caused many to flee such as the Dalai Lama, as well as the imprisonment and torture of thousands more who resisted Chinese rule. But Chinese aggression hasn't ended in Tibet. We see China reasserting itself in the South China Sea. As I discussed during a Southeast Asian unit, many countries claim parts of the South China Sea. However, as this map shows, China claims nearly all of the South China Sea and has even had armed conflict with countries such as Vietnam over the islands in the sea. International law allows a country to claim as its territory the seas 12 miles out from its shores as well as have exclusive economic rights out to 200 miles. This is why China's claim to the islands is so important. By claiming these islands, they can claim the seas around these islands. Now, when there isn't islands, China claims reefs and have made seven artificial islands as the satellite pictures show of the theory across reef in 2014 and 2015. But there is another reason for these artificial islands. The Chinese have installed new missile platforms on disputed islands in the South China Sea and they also appear to now be basing fighter jets there. China is arming these islands to project military force in the South China Sea. And why should we care as Americans? Because one of the missions of the United States Navy is to conduct what is called freedom of navigation operations. Since the International Court has dismissed China's extended claims of the South China Sea, the United States Navy regularly sails its ships and flies its aircraft through the areas claimed by China to exert the international community's freedom to use these waters. It's kind of like showing the bully that you're going to walk on his side of the street despite him telling you not to just to show him that you can do it. The fear is China could decide to take a swing at the United States Navy and put these two nuclear powers at war. Now speaking of potential nuclear conflict, there is North Korea. The North Korean regime is the most repressive government in the world. Its freedom house score of three makes China looks like the land of the free. But what is worrisome is not only has there never been an official end to the Korean War between South Korea and North Korea in the United States, but since 2006 they have conducted six atomic bomb tests. And if that's not enough, they have tested multiple long-distance missile tests, including this one. But it's not all bad news. Outside of China and North Korea, the four other countries all are true democracies and each enjoy a great deal of freedom. Alright, so despite the fact that we have learned we could be in a nuclear war with two East Asian countries, you should now have a better understanding of the population, government, and economies of the people of East Asia. So until next lesson, keep on learning.