The following text is my exam answer about the book “Lohikäärme, tiikeri ja krysanteemi – Johdatus Itä-Aasian yhteiskuntiin” and lectures of Contemporary East Asia held by university of Turku. No other sources nor referencing was required.
Chinese politics has its roots in dynasties that have ruled China for many centuries or rather milleniums. As the hanzi-characters were developed, mandarin authorities used them in the formal administration and governing of rules etc. Thus the first political sources can be found from the literary legacy of these writings. Confucianism became influential Chinese philosophy and principle of governing somewhere 500 BCE. To some extent it still plays an important role in East Asian traditions. Some dynasties have also favored Buddhism as a leading philosophy of politics. Unlike western religious communities, that have somewhat lost their ground from domination through secularization, economical individualism and scientific evaluation aimed to dogmatic principles, eastern ”religions” have not encountered as radical change, probably since they share less transcendental dogms compared to western religions. This might also explain, why collective traditions of East Asian cultures have still remained relatively strong, despite of the global changes e.g. industrialization that have modernized East Asian cultures as well.
However, traditional Chinese society that was being led by emperors of dynasties came to an end in the beginning of the 20th century. This did affect to traditional philosophies as well, leading to their decline at least in revolutional periods. At first China was being led by a republic governernment after the fall of Qing-dynasty. This was about to change, since the red army of people’s republic won the civil war and their communist party took the power in mainland China before 1950s. Meanwhile the leaders of Kuomintang escaped to an island known as Taiwan. To this day there are still these two Chinas, or at least politically speaking. This split slightly reminds of Korea which later also got divided into republic and people’s republic states. However, the development of Chinese society was soon to follow a different path compared to its Korean equivalents.
After the Maoist era of socialistic governing, Deng’s market oriented reforms took place. It was being said that ”whatever is good for growth, is good for socialism”, even though that took distance from the idea of socialism as it is being understood in the west. China was one of the first socialist countries in the world to make these reforms before the fall of socialist hegemony in larger political scale. (To contrast, North Korea is one of the few countries that still has not made these changes.) Nowadays China is a mixed system combining elements from different political ideas. Although China is namely controlled by China’s Communist Party, in reality the power structure is anything but monolithic. There might be competing factions inside the party and there are actually other parties as well, although their legislative power is small. In some parts of China they might still have some practical power. For example some autonomous areas and cities can make decisions by themselves. This can be seen as an equivalence of the economical ”let little ones go” privatization doctrine applied in politics. Briefly, sometimes China is being labelled as fragmented authoritarianism: a large bureaucracy with many different districts with their exceptions.
Anyway despite of some recessions and crises during the decades, China became a growing economy, and before the 21st century it had already became one of the biggest players in the world economy. Even though China’s socialist background is still being seen as a threat to its political and economical stability, it has given China relatively unique way of dealing political decisions in a global modern world. One could speculate that without a strong state China’s one child policy and recent investments to renewal energy sector for example might have not been as widely possible.
In early history Japan pretty much adopted the Chinese structures of governing, for example philosophy/religions and the writing system. Practically Japan hasn’t had dynasties though and its emperor institution is still being in use. However, emperor’s power became nominal a long time ago. Mostly Japan has lived relatively excluded from outer world under the power of different warlords (shōgun). During the era of colonialization Japan was being forced to trade with western countries. Especially United States was primarily executing these demands. Since that Japan has had closer ties with United States, in some conditions even compared to its former cultural role model China. Japan’s colonialistic actions in second world war also created more distance to other Asian countries. However, despite of Japan’s increased western characteristics it is still considered rather unique culture compared to western cultures. Japan’s relation to western countries has not always been easy either: Japan is the only country in history that has witnessed the destructive power of nuclear bombs (which were bombed by US in the second world war).
For these historical reasons Japan is relatively demilitarized country. This has been a one reason for Japanese success in its growth to the world’s most economically efficient country since Japan’s defence costs are so small. As other Asian countries, Japan also had practically one party system controlling the country in the post-war era. Democratization process has been going on all the time under western influences though. Liberal Democratic Party has mostly ruled Japan’s government. After Japan entered its long period of recession (which still has showed no signs of a change) LDP lost its hegemonic popularity. However, conditions were not going well with Democratic Party either which was in power for some years recently. Japan has faced problems of unemployment and aging that has challenged Japan’s growth even though Japan has still remained as a top player of world economics. Many industrialized countries, and nowadays including China, have also followed this progression.
China and Japan have shared a common heritage in earlier history but after the first signs of globalization (in the form of colonialization), they have followed quite different paths. For the sake of clear definitions, traditions of the east and the west might not be very useful here. The left and right wing politics might offer some ground for analysis of the practises but that is also a bit rigid simplification. Even though the modern economics based on trading have deepened the dependency between China, Japan and other countries nearby (which make China-Japan relation analysis a bit too artificial to get limited in), still especially the traumatic memories from war times create friction in these bilateral relations of China and Japan. Sometimes these past crimes are being used as weapons when present interests are being negotiated about.
Nevertheless, there has always been some conditions that have forced China and Japan to work together. At first glance one of the obvious reasons is geographical difference between the countries. Japan doesn’t have many resources of its own which makes trading an essential option. From the other side of the coin Japan has a lot of skilled labour and experience in high technology that might come in the advance when China has to find solutions to improve its conditions. The leap towards renewal energy solutions is a one notable example in this sense. The cultural trade of trends and ideas is a one point to consider as well.
However, every form of interaction between countries have seldom been (and possibly shouldn’t be) exclusively always about business and trading. Competitive structures of world economy might threaten the social fabric and tear communities apart as the profit-driven colonialization has also somewhat shown already in the past history. Thus Asian cultures might still have a valid reason to some extent stick on their strong collectivist practises (or update them). The globally witnessed reaction of the rising nationalism, which take part in China and Japan as well, might not be a promising progression to begin with though. It can be inclusive but usually only as a reaction to outer threats, meaning it wouldn’t have a positive power of inclusion in itself and usually sets nationalities against each other, even if they’re depended from each other. In addition, polarized nationalism might create widely hurtful conflicts in East Asian area where are still many divided nations and nationalities that haven’t fully recovered even from the cold war settings.
variksenpelotin 