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Was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed 'Genghis Khan,' he started the Mongol invasions that resulted in the conquest of most of Eurasia. These included raids or invasions of the Qara Khitai, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China.

He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire's writing system. He also practiced meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire while unifying the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. Genghis Khan is also credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment. This brought communication and trade from Northeast Asia into Muslim Southwest Asia and Christian Europe, thus expanding the horizons of all three cultural areas. Specifically, the four classes of people by the descending order were Mongolian people, Semu people, Han people (in the northern areas of China) and Southerners (people of the former Northern Song Dynasty (1127 - 1279)). According to the Yuan rulers' mind, the grading sequence was based on the sequencing of Mongolian's conquest of these people.

It was a kind of psychological indication that the earlier they submitted to Mongolian people, the higher social status they would be. Unfairly, the 'Four Class System' stipulated that four classes of people received different treatment in political, legal and military affairs. First, the real power was mainly grasped in the hands of the Mongolian people and Semu people while few of the court officials were Han people or any other ethnic minorities from the third and the fourth classes. Second, although all classes of people were allowed to attend the imperial examination, people of the third and fourth classes had to participate in more test subjects and exam questions that for them were more difficult, compared with the first and second class. Third, the fourth class people received unequal legal treatment. On committing the same crime, different punishments were handed down to different classes of people.

Fourth, the Mongolian people adopted a tight control towards the Han people and Southerners. These two classes were forbidden to possess any weapon or raise any dogs or eagles. Generally, the 'Four Class System' was a national policy of political oppression and ethnic division. Originally, it was established by Yuan's ruling class to guarantee the dominance of the Mongolian minority but it eventually became the catalyst that sped up the decline of the Yuan regime. Under the Ming dynasty, China experienced one of the greatest economic expansions in its history. This expansion affected every area of Chinese economic life: agriculture, commerce, and maritime trade and exploration.

It was under the Ming that the Chinese first began to trade and interact with Europeans on any significant scale. The presence of Europeans would eventually prove to be the most contentious aspect of modern Chinese history, but during the Ming, European trade greatly expanded Chinese economic life, particularly in the south. This commercial revolution included extensive trade with foreign countries, including direct trade with Europe.

By the late sixteenth century, China was intimately a part of the growing global economy. The Chinese were trading actively with the Portugese, the Dutch, and the Japanese, who traded silver for Chinese silks and porcelain. All this trade had made China one of the leading manufacturing economies in the world.

In exchange for raw goods such as silver—probably half the silver mined in the Americas from the mid-1500's to 1800 ended up in China—the Chinese shipped out manufactured goods such as textiles and porcelain. By the mid-1500's, China was well on its way to becoming an urban, industrial, and mercantile economy. The growth of the industrial sector spawned a technological boom in every area, from silk looms to paper manufacture to the development of new machines for planting, growing, and harvesting crops. Are a Chinese ethnic minority and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. They are sometimes called 'red-tasseled Manchus', a reference to the ornamentation on traditional Manchu hats.

Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in that country. They also form the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region. The Manchu way of life (economy) was described as agricultural, farming crops and raising animals on farms. Manchus practiced Slash-and-burn agriculture in the areas north of Shenyang. In spite of the fact that the Manchus practiced archery on horse back and equestrianism, the Manchus' immediate progenitors practiced sedentary agriculture. Although the Manchus also partook in hunting, they were sedentary. The military organization used by the Manchu tribes of Manchuria (now Northeast China) to conquer and control China in the 17th century.

The Banner system was developed by the Manchu leader Nurhachi (1559-1626), who in 1601 organized his warriors into four companies of 300 men each. The companies were distinguished by banners of different colours—yellow, red, white, and blue. In 1615 four more banners were added, using the same colours bordered in red, the red banner being bordered in white. As the Manchu increased their conquests, the size of the companies grew until each came to number 7,500 men divided into five regiments, divided, in turn, into five companies. All of Nurhachi's followers, with the exception of a few imperial princes, were organized into this Banner system, which also served an administrative function. Taxation, conscription, and registration of the population were carried out through the banner organization.

The bannermen lived, farmed, and worked with their families during times of peace, and in times of war each banner contributed a certain number of fighting men. As the Manchu began to conquer their Chinese and Mongol neighbours, they organized their captives into companies modeled after the banners. In 1635 eight Mongol banners were added to the Manchu system, and in 1642 eight Chinese banners were added. The new banners, which fought alongside the old, brought to 24 the total number of banner units. With these troops, the Manchu were able to conquer China and establish the Qing dynasty (1644-1911/12). The bannermen were considered a form of nobility and were given preferential treatment in terms of annual pensions, land, and allotments of rice and cloth. Manchu bannermen were on the whole treated better than their Mongol and Chinese counterparts, but all were prohibited from participating in trade and manual labour unless they petitioned to be removed from banner status.

Moreover, those who broke the law were not tried before an ordinary civil magistrate but by a special Manchu general. The queue was a specific male hairstyle worn by the Manchu people from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty. The hairstyle consisted of the hair on the front of the head being shaved off above the temples every ten days and the rest of the hair braided into a long ponytail. The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to Han Chinese in the early 17th century during the Manchu conquest of China. The Manchu hairstyle was significant because it was a symbol of Han submission to Qing rule. The queue also aided the Manchus in identifying those Han who refused to accept Qing dynasty domination.

The hairstyle was compulsory for all males and the penalty for not complying was execution for treason. The Queue Order or tonsure decree, was a series of laws violently imposed by the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in the seventeenth century.

It was also imposed on Taiwanese aborigines in 1753 and Koreans who settled in northeast China in the late 19th century. Traditionally, adult Han Chinese did not cut their hair. According to the Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius said not to. The queue was the only aspect of Manchu culture which the Qing forced on the common Han population. The purpose of the Queue Order was to demonstrate loyalty to the Qing.Manchus responded swiftly to this rebellion by killing the educated elite and instituting a stricter separation between Han Chinese and Manchus. Was the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty, the first to be born on Chinese soil south of the Pass (Beijing) and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722.

Kangxi's reign of 61 years makes him the longest-reigning emperor in Chinese history (although his grandson, the Qianlong Emperor, had the longest period of de facto power) and one of the longest-reigning rulers in the world. However, since he ascended the throne at the age of seven, actual power was held for six years by four regents and his grandmother, the Grand Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang. Kangxi is considered one of China's greatest emperors.

He suppressed the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, forced the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan to submit to Qing rule, blocked Tsarist Russia on the Amur River and expanded the empire in the northwest. He also accomplished such literary feats as the compilation of the Kangxi Dictionary. Kangxi's reign brought about long-term stability and relative wealth after years of war and chaos. He initiated the period known as the 'Prosperous Era of Kangxi and Qianlong' or 'High Qing', which lasted for generations after his own lifetime. By the end of his reign, the Qing Empire controlled all of China proper, Taiwan, Manchuria, part of the Russian Far East (Outer Manchuria), both Inner and Outer Mongolia, and Tibet proper. (13 December 1678 - 8 October 1735), born Yinzhen, was the fifth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the third Qing emperor to rule over China proper. He reigned from 1722 to 1735.

A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimal expense. Like his father, the Kangxi Emperor, Yongzheng used military force to preserve the dynasty's position. His reign was known for being despotic, efficient, and vigorous.

Although Yongzheng's reign was much shorter than that of both his father (the Kangxi Emperor) and his son (the Qianlong Emperor), Yongzheng continued an era of peace and prosperity. He cracked down on corruption and reformed the financial administration. His reign saw the formulation of the Grand Council, an institution which had an enormous impact on the future of the Qing dynasty. (25 September 1711 - 7 February 1799) was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. Born Aisin Gioro Hongli, the fourth son of the Yongzheng Emperor, he reigned officially from 11 October 1735 to 8 February 1796.1 On 8 February, he abdicated in favour of his son, the Jiaqing Emperor - a filial act in order not to reign longer than his grandfather, the illustrious Kangxi Emperor. Despite his retirement, however, he retained ultimate power as a emperor emeritus until his death in 1799.

Although his early years saw the continuation of an era of prosperity in China, his final years saw troubles at home and abroad converge on the Qing Empire. The Qianlong Emperor, like his predecessors, took his cultural role seriously. First of all, he worked to preserve the Manchu heritage, which he saw as the basis of the moral character of the Manchus and thus of the dynasty's power. He ordered the compilation of Manchu language genealogies, histories, and ritual handbooks and in 1747 secretly ordered the compilation of the Shamanic Code, published later in the Siku Quanshu.

The Qianlong Emperor was a major patron and important 'preserver and restorer' of Confucian culture. He had an insatiable appetite for collecting, and acquired much of China's 'great private collections' by any means necessary, and 'reintegrated their treasures into the imperial collection.'

Was an important policy-making body during the Qing dynasty. It was established in 1733 by the Yongzheng Emperor.

The Council was originally in charge of military affairs, but gradually attained a more important role and eventually attained the role of a privy council, eclipsing the Grand Secretariat in function and importance, which is why it has become known as the 'Grand Council' in English. Despite its important role in the government, the Grand Council remained an informal policy making body in the inner court and its members held other concurrent posts in the Qing civil service.

A Memorial, most commonly zouyi, was the most important form of document sent by an official to the Emperor. The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1672-1720), the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1720-1736), and the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1793) therefore developed a supplementary system of 'Palace Memorials' (zouzhe) which they instructed local officials to send directly, without passing through bureaucratic filters. One type, the 'Folding Memorial,' was written on a page small enough for the Emperor to hold in his hand and read without being observed. The Yongzheng Emperor, who preferred the written system over audiences, increased the use of these palace memorials by more than ten times over his father.

He found he could get quick responses to emergency requests instead of waiting for the formal report, or give frank instructions. Most important, bypassing the regular bureaucracy made it easier for the emperor to have his own way without being restricted by the regulations of the administrative code.

Was the administrative office and/or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China. A yamen can also be any governmental office or body headed by a mandarin, at any level of government: the offices of one the Six Ministries is a yamen, but so is a prefectural magistracy. Within a local yamen, the bureaucrat administered the government business of the town or region. Typical responsibilities of the bureaucrat includes local finance, capital works, judging of civil and criminal cases, and issuing decrees and policies. Typically, the bureaucrat and his immediate family would live in a residence attached to the yamen. This was especially so during the Qing dynasty, when imperial law forbade a person from taking government office in his native province.

Yamens varied greatly in size depending on the level of government they administered, and the seniority of the bureaucrat's office. However, a yamen at a local level typically had similar features: a front gate, a courtyard and a hall (typically serving as a court of law); offices, prison cells and store rooms; and residences for the bureaucrat, his family and his staff. Opium Wars is a collective term for two wars in the mid-19th century involving Anglo-Chinese disputes over British trade in China and China's sovereignty. The disputes included the First Opium War (1839-1842) and the Second Opium War (1856-1860). The wars and events between them weakened the Qing dynasty and reduced China's separation from the rest of the world.[1][2] The two segments of warfare it refers to are: The First Opium War, during 1839-1842, was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.

The treaty ceded the island of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom in perpetuity, and it established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo, Fuchow, and Amoy. Another treaty the next year gave most favoured nation status to the United Kingdom and added provisions for British extraterritoriality. Then the United States and France secured concessions on the same terms as the British, in treaties of 1843 and 1844.During 1856-1860, British forces fought towards legalization of the opium trade, to expand coolie trade, to open all of China to British merchants, and to exempt foreign imports from internal transit duties. France joined the British; the U.S. Had a minor involvement uncoordinated with the major efforts of the U.K. The war is also known as the 'Arrow War', referring to the name of a vessel at the starting point of the conflict. The Arrow War resulted in a second group of treaty ports being set up; eventually more than 80 treaty ports were established in China, involving many foreign powers.

All foreign traders gained rights to travel within China. Formally called the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China, was signed on the 29 August 1842 to mark the end of the First Opium War (1839-42) between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Qing dynasty of China. It was the first of the unequal treaties against the Chinese, as Britain had no obligations in return. In the wake of China's military defeat, with British warships poised to attack the city, representatives from the British and Qing Empires negotiated aboard HMS Cornwallis anchored at Nanjing. On 29 August 1842, British representative Sir Henry Pottinger and Qing representatives, Qiying, Yilibu, and Niujian, signed the treaty. It consisted of thirteen articles and ratification by Queen Victoria and the Daoguang Emperor was exchanged nine months later.

Is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. The most well-known cases of historical extraterritoriality concerned European nationals in 19th century China, Japan and Siam under the unequal treaties. Extraterritoriality (without reciprocity) was first imposed upon China by the British in the Treaty of Nanking, resulting from the First Opium War. It was subsequently imposed upon China by the Americans under the Treaty of Wanghia and the Treaty of Tientsin. Shanghai in particular became a major center of foreign activity, as it contained two extraterritorial zones, the Shanghai International Settlement and the Shanghai French Concession. Chinese and non-treaty state nationals in these settlements were subject to Chinese law but were tried by the International Mixed Court which had a Chinese judge and foreign assessor sitting on it.

Extraterritorial rights were not limited to Western nations; Japan and China granted each other reciprocal extraterritorial rights when both opened to trade. Later, in 1895, under the Treaty of Shimonoseki China gave up its extraterritorial rights in Japan and Japan obtained further rights in China. Japan later claimed extraterritorial privileges elsewhere in Asia. In 1921, an international resolution was signed expressing the willingness of the parties to end extraterritoriality in China once a satisfactory legal system was established by China. Was a massive rebellion or civil war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864, which was fought between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Christian millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace. The Taiping Rebellion began in the southwestern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of persecution against a Christian sect known as the God Worshipping Society led by Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The war was mostly fought in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Hubei, but over 14 years of war, the Taiping Army had marched through every regularized province of China proper except Gansu.

The war was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the nineteenth century with estimates of war dead ranging from 20 to 70 million dead, as well as millions more displaced. 1861 - 1895, was a period of institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following a series of military defeats and concessions to foreign powers. To make peace with the Western powers in China, Prince Gong was made regent, Grand Councilor, and head of the newly formed Zongli Yamen (a de facto foreign affairs ministry). By contrast, Empress Dowager Cixi was virulently anti-foreign, but she had to accommodate Prince Gong because he was an influential political figure in the Qing imperial court.

She would, however, become the most formidable opponent of reform as her political influence increased. The majority of the ruling elite still subscribed to a conservative Confucian worldview, but following China's serious defeats in the First and Second Opium Wars, several officials now argued that in order to strengthen itself against the West, it was necessary to adopt Western military technology and armaments. This could be achieved by establishing shipyards and arsenals, and by hiring foreign advisers to train Chinese artisans to manufacture such wares in China. As such, the 'self-strengtheners' were by and large uninterested in any social reform beyond the scope of economic and military modernization.

Was fought between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan, primarily over control of Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the Chinese port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895. The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing Empire's attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan's successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan; the prestige of the Qing Empire, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. Maya 2014 Xforce Keygen Download.

The humiliating loss of Korea as a vassal state sparked an unprecedented public outcry. Within China, the defeat was a catalyst for a series of political upheavals led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. The war is commonly known in China as the War of Jiawu referring to the year (1894) as named under the traditional sexagenary system of years. In Japan, it is called the Japan-Qing War. In Korea, where much of the war took place, it is called the Qing-Japan War.

Was a Chinese revolutionary, first president and founding father of the Republic of China, and medical practitioner. As the foremost pioneer of the Republic of China, Sun is referred to as the 'Father of the Nation' in the Republic of China (ROC), and the 'forerunner of democratic revolution' in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Sun played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the years leading up to the Double Ten Revolution. He was appointed to serve as Provisional President of the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912.

He later co-founded the Kuomintang (KMT), serving as its first leader. Sun was a uniting figure in post-Imperial China, and he remains unique among 20th-century Chinese politicians for being widely revered amongst the people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the revolution, he quickly resigned, due to Beiyang Clique pressure, from his post as President of the newly founded Republic of China, and led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the warlords who controlled much of the nation. Sun did not live to see his party consolidate its power over the country during the Northern Expedition. His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split into two factions after his death. Sun's chief legacy resides in his developing of the political philosophy known as the Three Principles of the People: nationalism (non-ethnic, independence from imperialist domination), democracy (to Western standards), and the people's livelihood (free trade capitalism and Georgist tax reform.

Was a Chinese political and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975. He is known as Chiang Chung-cheng (蔣中正, Jiang Zhongzheng) or Chiang Chieh-shih (蔣介石, Jiang Jieshi) in Standard Chinese. Chiang was an influential member of the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party, and was a close ally of Sun Yat-sen. He became the Commandant of the Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy and took Sun's place as leader of the KMT when Sun died in 1925. In 1926, Chiang led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's nominal leader.

He served as Chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 to 1948. Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War (the Chinese theater of World War II), consolidating power from the party's former regional warlords. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek was socially conservative, promoting traditional Chinese culture in the New Life Movement and rejecting western democracy and the nationalist democratic socialism that Sun embraced in favour of an authoritarian government. Chiang's predecessor, Sun Yat-sen, was well-liked and respected by the Communists, but after Sun's death Chiang was not able to maintain good relations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A major split between the Nationalists and Communists occurred in 1927; and, under Chiang's leadership, the Nationalists fought a nationwide civil war against the Communists. After Japan invaded China in 1937, Chiang agreed to a temporary truce with the CCP.

Despite some early cooperative military successes against Japan, by the time that the Japanese surrendered in 1945 neither the CCP nor the KMT trusted or was actively cooperating with the other. After the Marshall Mission, an American-sponsored attempt to negotiate a coalition government, failed in 1946, the Chinese Civil War resumed. The CCP defeated the Nationalists in 1949. Westad says the Communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Furthermore, his party was weakened in the war against Japan. Meanwhile, the Communists told different groups, such as peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and cloaked themselves in the cover of Chinese Nationalism. Chiang's government and army retreated to Taiwan, where Chiang imposed martial law and persecuted people critical of his rule in a period known as the 'White Terror'.

After evacuating to Taiwan, Chiang's government continued to declare its intention to retake mainland China. Chiang ruled Taiwan securely as President of the Republic of China and General of the Kuomintang until his death in 1975. Mao Tse-tung and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 - September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.

His Marxist-Leninist theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought. Born the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao adopted a Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist outlook in early life, particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. Mao converted to Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University and became a founding member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CPC, Mao helped to found the Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies and ultimately became head of the CPC during the Long March. Although the CPC temporarily allied with the KMT under the United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), after Japan's defeat China's civil war resumed and in 1949 Mao's forces defeated the Nationalists who withdrew to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), a single-party state controlled by the CPC.

In the following years Mao solidified his control through land reform campaigns against landlords, and perceived enemies of the state he termed as 'counter-revolutionaries'. In 1957 he launched a campaign known as the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China's economy from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, which led to a widespread famine whose death toll is estimated at between 18 and 45 million. In 1966, he initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a program to remove 'counter-revolutionary' elements of Chinese society that lasted 10 years and which was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts and unprecedented elevation of Mao's personality cult. In 1972, Mao welcomed U.S.

President Richard Nixon in Beijing, signalling a policy of opening China, which was furthered under the rule of Deng Xiaoping (1978-1992). Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976, dying in that September, aged 82. He was succeeded as Paramount Leader by Hua Guofeng (1976-1978), who was quickly sidelined and replaced by Xiaoping.

A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history. Supporters credit him with driving imperialism out of China, modernising China and building it into a world power, promoting the status of women, improving education and health care, and increasing life expectancy as China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million during the period of his leadership. He is also known as a theorist, military strategist, poet and visionary. In contrast, critics consider him a dictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin who severely damaged traditional Chinese culture, as well as a perpetrator of systematic human rights abuses who was responsible for an estimated 40 to 70 million deaths through starvation, forced labour and executions, ranking his tenure as the top incidence of democide in human history. Was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919, protesting against the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, especially allowing Japan to receive territories in Shandong which had been surrendered by Germany after the Siege of Tsingtao.

These demonstrations sparked national protests and marked the upsurge of Chinese nationalism, a shift towards political mobilization and away from cultural activities, and a move towards a populist base rather than intellectual elites. Many political and social leaders of the next decades emerged at this time. The term 'May Fourth Movement' in a broader sense often refers to the period during 1915-1921 more often called the New Culture Movement. Protests of 1989, commonly known as the June Fourth Incident or '89 Democracy Movement, were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the spring of 1989 and received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within China's political leadership. The protests were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the military to enforce martial law in the country's capital. The crackdown that initiated on June 3-4 became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, which students and other demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks.

The number of civilian deaths has been estimated at anywhere between hundreds and thousands. The Chinese government condemned the protests as a counter-revolutionary riot, and has largely prohibited discussion and remembrance of the events.

The protests were triggered in April 1989 by the death of former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, a liberal reformer who was deposed after losing a power struggle with hardliners over the direction of political and economic reforms. University students marched and gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn. Hu had also voiced grievances against inflation, limited career prospects, and corruption of the party elite. The protesters called for government accountability, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the restoration of workers' control over industry. At the height of the protests, about a million people assembled in the Square. Most of them were university students in Beijing. The government initially took a conciliatory stance toward the protesters.

The student-led hunger strike galvanized support for the demonstrators around the country and the protests spread to 400 cities by mid-May. Ultimately, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and other party elders resolved to use force. Party authorities declared martial law on May 20, and mobilized as many as 300,000 troops to Beijing.

In the aftermath of the crackdown, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press. The police and internal security forces were strengthened. Officials deemed sympathetic to the protests were demoted or purged. Zhao Ziyang was ousted in a party leadership reshuffle and replaced with Jiang Zemin. Political reforms were largely halted and economic reforms did not resume until Deng Xiaoping's 1992 southern tour.

The Chinese government was widely condemned internationally for the use of force against the protesters. Western governments imposed economic sanctions and arms embargoes. The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is a bestselling 1997 non-fiction book written by Iris Chang about the 1937-1938 Nanking Massacre, the massacre and atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after it captured Nanjing, then capital of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It describes the events leading up to the Nanking Massacre and the atrocities that were committed. The book presents the view that the Japanese government has not done enough to redress the atrocities. It is one of the first major English-language books to introduce the Nanking Massacre to Western and Eastern readers alike, and has been translated into several languages. The book was a source of fame for Chang but was also controversial; it was received with both acclaim and criticism by the public and by academics.

It has been praised as a work that 'shows more clearly than any previous account' the extent and brutality of the episode, while at the same time it was criticized as 'seriously flawed' and 'full of misinformation and harebrained explanations'.Chang's research on the book was credited with the finding of the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin, both of whom played important roles in the Nanking Safety Zone, a designated area in Nanjing that protected Chinese civilians during the Nanking Massacre. China has been through a series of land reforms, several of which resulted in the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens. In the 1940s, the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, funded with American money, with the support of the national government, carried out land reform and community action programs in several provinces. In 1946, three years before the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), The Communist Party of China launched a thorough land reform, which won the party millions of supporters among the poor and middle peasantry.

The land and other property of landlords were expropriated and redistributed so that each household in a rural village would have a comparable holding. This agrarian revolution was made infamous in the West by William Hinton's book Fanshen.

Ren Bishi, a member of the party's Central Committee, likewise stated in a 1948 speech that '30,000,000 landlords and rich peasants would have to be destroyed.' Shortly after the founding of the PRC, land reform, according to Mao biographer Philip Short, 'lurched violently to the left' with Mao laying down new guidelines for 'not correcting excesses prematurely.' Mao insisted that the people themselves, not the security organs, should become involved in the killing of landlords who had oppressed them. This was quite different from Soviet practice, in which the NKVD would arrest counterrevolutionaries and then have them secretly executed and often buried before sunrise. Mao thought that peasants who killed landlords with their bare hands would become permanently linked to the revolutionary process in a way that passive spectators could not be.[56] Actual numbers killed in land reform are believed to have been lower, but did rank in the millions, as there was a policy to select 'at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution'. Rummel, an analyst of government killings, or 'democide', gives a 'reasonably conservative figure' of about 4,500,000 landlords and better-off peasants killed.

Philip Short estimates that at least one to three million landlords and members of their families were killed, either beaten to death on the spot by enraged peasants at mass meetings organized by local communist party work teams or reserved for public execution later on. Estimates abroad ranged as high as 28,000,000 deaths.

In 1976 the U.S. State Department estimated that there may have been a million killed in the land reform;[58] Mao estimated that only 800,000 landlords were killed. In the mid-1950s, a second land reform during the Great Leap Forward compelled individual farmers to join collectives, which, in turn, were grouped into People's communes with centrally controlled property rights and an egalitarian principle of distribution. This policy was generally a failure in terms of production. The PRC reversed this policy in 1962 through the proclamation of the Sixty Articles.

As a result, the ownership of the basic means of production was divided into three levels with collective land ownership vested in the production team (see also Ho [2001]). A third land reform beginning in the late 1970s re-introduced the family-based contract system known as the Household Responsibility System, was followed by a period of stagnation. Chen, Wang, and Davis [1998] suggest that the stagnation was due, in part, to a system of periodic redistributions that encouraged over-exploitation rather than private capital investment in future productivity. However, although land use rights were returned to individual farmers, collective land ownership was left undefined after the disbandment of the People's Communes.

Since 1983, China has launched a series of land policy reforms to improve land-use efficiency, to rationalize land allocation, to enhance land management, and to coordinate urban and rural development. These land policy reforms have yielded positive impacts on urban land use as well as negative socioeconomic consequences. On the positive side, they have contributed to emerging land markets, increased government revenue for the financing of massive infrastructure projects and provision of public goods, and improved the rationalization of land use. On the negative side, problems such as loss of social equity, socioeconomic conflicts, and government corruption have emerged. Since 1998 China is in the midst of drafting the new Property Law which is the first piece of national legislation that will define the land ownership structure in China for years to come. The Property Law forms the basis for China's future land policy of establishing a system of freehold, rather than of private ownership. Was a period in 1956 in the People's Republic of China during which the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime.

Differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong: 'The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science.' After this brief period of liberalization, Mao abruptly changed course.

The crackdown continued through 1957 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology. Those targeted were publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps. Mao remarked at the time that he had 'enticed the snakes out of their caves.' The first part of the phrase is often remembered as 'let a hundred flowers bloom'. It is used to refer to an orchestrated campaign to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, and then subsequently imprison them. This view is supported by authors Clive James and Jung Chang, who posit that the campaign was, from the start, a ruse intended to expose rightists and counter-revolutionaries, and that Mao Zedong persecuted those whose views were different from the party's.

Mao's personal physician Li Zhisui, suggested that the campaign was 'a gamble, based on a calculation that genuine counterrevolutionaries were few, that rebels like Hu Feng had been permanently intimidated into silence, and that other intellectuals would follow Mao's lead, speaking out only against the people and practices Mao himself most wanted to subject to reform.' Only when criticisms began shifting toward him personally did Mao move to suppress the Hundred Flowers movement and punish some of its participants. The ideological crackdown following the campaign's failure re-imposed Maoist orthodoxy in public expression, and catalyzed the Anti-Rightist Movement. In the People's Republic of China, which lasted from roughly 1957 to 1959, consisted of a series of campaigns to purge alleged 'rightists' within the Communist Party of China (CPC) and abroad. The definition of rightists was not always consistent, sometimes including critics to the left of the government, but officially referred to those intellectuals who appeared to favor capitalism and were against collectivization.

The campaigns were instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong and saw the political persecution of an estimated 550,000 people. Formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a social-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 until 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. The Revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the Great Leap Forward. The movement paralyzed China politically and significantly affected the country economically and socially.

The Revolution was launched in May 1966, after Mao alleged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these 'revisionists' be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials, most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed.

Cultural and religious sites were ransacked. Mao officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, but its active phase lasted until the death of the military leader Lin Biao in 1971. After Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gradually began to dismantle the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was 'responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic.

Is a Chinese term used to refer to an occupation with guaranteed job security, as well as steady income and benefits. The Chinese term can be compared to the similar (but not identical) English concept of a 'job for life'. Traditionally, people considered to have iron rice bowls include military personnel, members of the civil service, as well as employees of various state run enterprises (through the mechanism of the work unit). Because the 'Iron Rice Bowl' guaranteed a stable standard of living regardless of the amount of effort made by the worker, the term is used to describe extremely unmotivated and unproductive workers. Recent moves at cutting benefits and privatization of various state run businesses in Taiwan such as the Taiwan Railway Administration and China Airlines have led many in those industries to believe that their iron rice bowls are in jeopardy, and has led to strikes (and threats thereof), as well as being the subject of much political debate.

After the First Opium War (1839-42), Hong Kong became a British colony with the perpetual cession of Hong Kong Island, followed by Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 and a 99-year lease of the New Territories from 1898. Hong Kong remained under British control for about a century until the Second World War, when Japan occupied the colony from December 1941 to August 1945. After the Japanese surrender the British resumed control until 30 June 1997.

As a result of negotiations between China and Britain, Hong Kong was transferred to the People's Republic of China under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. The territory became a special administrative region of China with a high degree of autonomy on 1 July 1997 under the principle of one country, two systems.

Disputes over the perceived misapplication of this principle have contributed to popular protests, including the 2014 Umbrella Revolution. The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the Tokugawa bakufu and the Edo bakufu, was the last feudal Japanese military government which existed between 1603 and 1868. The heads of government were the shoguns, and each was a member of the Tokugawa clan. A shogun's office or administration is the shogunate, known in Japanese as the bakufu ( literally 'tent office/government'), which originally referred to house of the general and later also suggested a private government under a shogun. The tent symbolized the field commander but also denoted that such an office was meant to be temporary.

The shogun's officials were as a collective the bakufu, and were those who carried out the actual duties of administration while the imperial court retained only nominal authority. In this context, the office of the shōgun had a status equivalent to that of a viceroy or governor-general, but in reality shōguns dictated orders to everyone including the reigning Emperor. 'general', literally 'military commander') was a hereditary military dictator in Japan during the period from 1192 to 1867, with some caveats.

In this period, the shoguns were the de facto rulers of the country, although nominally they were appointed by the Emperor as a formality. The Shogun held almost absolute power over territories through military means, in contrast to the concept of a colonial governor in Western culture who was appointed by a king. Nevertheless, an unusual situation occurred during the Kamakura period (1199-1333) upon the death of the first shogun, whereby the Hōjō clan's hereditary titles of Shikken and Tokuso (1256-1333) monopolized the shogunate, collectively deemed as the Regent Rule.

The actual shogun during this period met the same fate as the Emperor and was reduced to a figurehead until a coup in 1333, in which retainers restored power to the shogun. Were the military-nobility and officer-caste of medieval and early-modern Japan. In Japanese, they are usually referred to as bushi ( or buke). 'In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning 'to wait upon' or 'accompany persons' in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau.

In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean 'those who serve in close attendance to the nobility', the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai. According to Wilson, an early reference to the word 'samurai' appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905-914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the 10th century. By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi, and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai were usually associated with a clan and their lord, were trained as officers in military tactics and grand strategy, and they followed a set of rules that later came to be known as the bushidō. While the samurai numbered less than 10% of then Japan's population, their teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts. From childhood, the Samurai were trained to have self-discipline and a sense of duty, together with contempt for material goods and for fear, pain and especially death. Literally meaning 'the way of the warrior', is a Japanese word for the way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry.

'Bushido' is a modern term rather than a historical one. The 'way' itself originates from the samurai moral values, most commonly stressing some combination of frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honor until death.

Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in Tokugawa Japan and following Confucian texts, Bushido was also influenced by Shinto and Zen Buddhism, allowing the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered by wisdom and serenity. Bushidō developed between the 16th and 20th centuries, debated by pundits who believed they were building on a legacy dating back to the 10th century, although some scholars have noted that the term bushidō itself is 'rarely attested in premodern literature'. Was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death.

The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633-39 and remained in effect until 1853 with the arrival of the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry and the forcible opening of Japan to Western trade. It was still illegal to leave Japan until the Meiji Restoration (1868). It was preceded by an era commonly referred to as Sengoku, or the Warring States period of Japanese history. The term Sakoku originates from the manuscript work Sakoku-ron written by Japanese astronomer Shizuki Tadao in 1801. Shizuki invented the word while translating the works of the 17th-century German traveller Engelbert Kaempfer concerning Japan. Japan was not completely isolated under the sakoku policy.

It was a system in which strict regulations were applied to commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate, and by certain feudal domains (han). The policy stated that the only European influence permitted was the Dutch factory at Dejima in Nagasaki. Trade with China was also handled at Nagasaki. Trade with Korea was limited to the Tsushima Domain (today part of Nagasaki Prefecture). Trade with the Ainu people was limited to the Matsumae Domain in Hokkaidō, and trade with the Ryūkyū Kingdom took place in Satsuma Domain (present-day Kagoshima Prefecture). Apart from these direct commercial contacts in peripheral provinces, trading countries sent regular missions to the shogun in Edo. Literally 'Dutch Learning', and by extension 'Western Learning') is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the country was closed to foreigners, 1641-1853, because of the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of national isolation (sakoku).

A meeting of Japan, China, and the West, Shiba Kōkan, late 18th century. Through Rangaku, some people in Japan learned many aspects of the scientific and technological revolution occurring in Europe at that time, helping the country build up the beginnings of a theoretical and technological scientific base, which helps to explain Japan's success in its radical and speedy modernization following the opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854. After the emperor's death in 1912, the Japanese Diet passed a resolution to commemorate his role in the Meiji Ishin, Renovation, Revolution, Reform, or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji.

Although there were Emperors before the Meiji Restoration, the events restored practical abilities and consolidated the political system under the Emperor of Japan, which previously was held by the Tokugawa shogunate. The goals of the restored government were expressed by the new emperor in the Charter Oath. The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure, and spanned both the late Edo period (often called Late Tokugawa shogunate) and the beginning of the Meiji period. The period spanned from 1868 to 1912 and was responsible for the emergence of Japan as a modernized nation in the early twentieth century.

Is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under parallel voting systems. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally responsible for selecting the Prime Minister. The Diet was first convened as the Imperial Diet in 1889 as a result of adopting the Meiji Constitution. The Diet took its current form in 1947 upon the adoption of the postwar constitution and is considered by the Constitution to be the highest organ of state power.

The National Diet Building is located in Nagatachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Was fought between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan, primarily over control of Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the Chinese port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895. The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing Empire's attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan's successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan; the prestige of the Qing Empire, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. The humiliating loss of Korea as a vassal state sparked an unprecedented public outcry.

Within China, the defeat was a catalyst for a series of political upheavals led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. (8 February 1904 - 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year.

Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, negotiations between Russia and Japan had proved impractical. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian far-east from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as within the Japanese sphere of influence.

Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests and chose to go to war. After negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur in a surprise attack. Russia suffered numerous defeats to Japan, but Tsar Nicholas II was convinced that Russia would win and chose to remain engaged in the war; at first, to await the outcomes of certain naval battles, and later to preserve the dignity of Russia by averting a 'humiliating peace'. The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt. The complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers.

The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japan's recent entry onto the world stage. Scholars continue to debate the historical significance of the war. 1931-37: Japan Vs. China[edit] September 18, 1931: Mukden Incident, known as the '9.18 Incident': Japanese agents blow up part of the Japanese owned South Manchurian Railroad at Mukden in northeastern China, and label it sabotage by Chinese forces.

Using the incident as a pretext, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria is launched. Within six months the occupation of Manchuria is complete. January 28, 1932: The January 28 Incident: fighting erupts between Chinese boycotters and Japanese troops protecting the Japanese section of Shanghai.

The Japanese dispatch a naval invasion force in an attempt to capture Shanghai. However, the invasion ended in a stalemate. United Kingdom and United States broker a cease-fire between China and Japan three months after the hostilities begin. February, 1932: Manchukuo is announced as an independent nation, in reality a Japanese puppet government for Manchuria. It encompassed the three northeastern Chinese provinces occupied by Japan since the '9.18 Incident.'

Japanese control remains direct however, and Japanese owned interests gain considerable power. Additionally, the opium trade is encouraged. Manchukuo was not recognized by the League of Nations and Japan subsequently withdraws from the organization.

May, 1932 May 15 incident: Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi assassinated by a group of young officers for his support of the London Naval Treaty, which is seen in Japan as preventing parity of forces. January 1934, the Soviet Union invades the Republic of China in the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. October, 1934 - November, 1935: The Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong conduct the Long March, retreating from Kiangsi to Yan'an in Shensi. Jigoku Shoujo Live Action Sub Indo there. December 29, 1934: Japan abrogates the Washington Naval Treaty. December, 1935: Large-scale anti-Japanese riots take place in Beiping. February, 1936 February 26 Incident: Japanese junior officers coup attempt. November, 1936: Japan joins Germany in signing the Anti-Comintern Pact, concluded to provide a two-front threat to the Soviet Union.

Japan is however not interested in being drawn into a European war, and thus the pact is not a true alliance. December 25, 1936: Xi'an Incident: Arrest of Chiang Kai-Shek by Zhang Xueliang leads to Second United Front alignment against Japan. July 7, 1937: Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Japanese forces conducting military exercises outside Peking claimed that several Japanese soldiers were not accounted for after the exercise. Japanese launch an all-out assault.

Nanking government declares its intent to resist Japan, marking the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. (Note: For political reasons, war was not declared by either side at this point. The Chinese declaration of war came on December 8, 1941).

On May 3, 1947, Japan's postwar constitution goes into effect. The progressive constitution granted universal suffrage, stripped Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power, stipulated a bill of rights, abolished peerage, and outlawed Japan's right to make war. The document was largely the work of Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur and his occupation staff, who had prepared the draft in February 1946 after a Japanese attempt was deemed unacceptable. As the defender of the Philippines from 1941 to 1942, and commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific theater from 1942 to 1945, Douglas MacArthur was the most acclaimed American general in the war against Japan. On September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, he presided over the official surrender of Japan. According to the terms of surrender, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government were subject to the authority of the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers in occupied Japan, a post filled by General MacArthur.

On September 8, Supreme Commander MacArthur made his way by automobile through the ruins of Tokyo to the American embassy, which would be his home for the next five and a half years. The occupation was to be a nominally Allied enterprise, but increasing Cold War division left Japan firmly in the American sphere of influence. From his General Headquarters, which overlooked the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, MacArthur presided over an extremely productive reconstruction of Japanese government, industry, and society along American models. MacArthur was a gifted administrator, and his progressive reforms were for the most part welcomed by the Japanese people. The most important reform carried out by the American occupation was the establishment of a new constitution to replace the 1889 Meiji Constitution. In early 1946, the Japanese government submitted a draft for a new constitution to the General Headquarters, but it was rejected for being too conservative. MacArthur ordered his young staff to draft their own version in one week.

The document, submitted to the Japanese government on February 13, 1946, protected the civil liberties MacArthur had introduced and preserved the emperor, though he was stripped of power. Article 9 forbade the Japanese ever to wage war again. Before Japan's defeat, Emperor Hirohito was officially regarded as Japan's absolute ruler and a quasi-divine figure.

Although his authority was sharply limited in practice, he was consulted with by the Japanese government and approved of its expansionist policies from 1931 through World War II. Hirohito feared, with good reason, that he might be indicted as a war criminal and the Japanese imperial house abolished. MacArthur's constitution at least preserved the emperor as the 'symbol of the state and of the unity of the people,' so Hirohito offered his support.

Many conservatives in the government were less enthusiastic, but on April 10, 1946, the new constitution was endorsed in popular elections that allowed Japanese women to vote for the first time. The final draft, slightly revised by the Japanese government, was made public one week later. On November 3, it was promulgated by the Diet-the Japanese parliament-and on May 3, 1947, it came into force. In 1948, Yoshida Shigeru's election as prime minister ushered in the Yoshida era, marked by political stability and rapid economic growth in Japan. In 1949, MacArthur gave up much of his authority to the Japanese government, and in September 1951 the United States and 48 other nations signed a formal peace treaty with Japan.

On April 28, 1952, the treaty went into effect, and Japan assumed full sovereignty as the Allied occupation came to an end. Literally system, series, grouping of enterprises, order of succession) is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. It is a type of informal business group.

The keiretsu maintained dominance over the Japanese economy for the last half of the 20th century. The member companies own small portions of the shares in each other's companies, centered on a core bank; this system helps insulate each company from stock market fluctuations and takeover attempts, thus enabling long-term planning in innovative projects. It is a key element of the automotive industry in Japan. Is the name given to the historical phenomenon of Japan's record period of economic growth between post-World War II era to the end of Cold War. During the economic boom, Japan was catapulted into the world's second largest economy (after the United States) by the 1960s. However, it suffered its longest economic stagnation since World War II during the Lost Decade in the 1990s. Was the result of Post-World War II Japan and West Germany benefiting from the Cold War.[dubious - discuss] It occurred partly due to the aid and assistance of the United States, but chiefly due to the economic interventionism of the Japanese government.[citation needed] After World War II, the United States established a significant presence in Japan to slow the expansion of Soviet influence in the Pacific.

The United States was also concerned with the growth of the economy of Japan because there was a risk after World War II that an unhappy and poor Japanese population would turn to communism and by doing so ensure that the Soviet Union would control the Pacific. The distinguishing characteristics of the Japanese economy during the 'economic miracle' years included: the cooperation of manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and banks in closely knit groups called keiretsu; the powerful enterprise unions and shuntō; good relations with government bureaucrats, and the guarantee of lifetime employment (Shūshin koyō) in big corporations and highly unionized blue-collar factories. This economic miracle was spurred mainly by Japanese economic policy, in particular through the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Was a Korean kingdom founded by Yi Seonggye that lasted for approximately five centuries, from July 1392 to October 1897. It was officially renamed the Korean Empire in October 1897.[3] It was founded following the aftermath of the overthrow of Goryeo in what is today the city of Kaesong.

Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul. The kingdom's northernmost borders were expanded to the natural boundaries at the Yalu and Tumen Rivers through the subjugation of the Jurchens. Joseon was the last dynasty of Korea and its longest-ruling Confucian dynasty. During its reign, Joseon encouraged the entrenchment of Chinese Confucian ideals and doctrines in Korean society.

Neo-Confucianism was installed as the new dynasty's state ideology. Buddhism was accordingly discouraged and occasionally faced persecutions by the dynasty. Joseon consolidated its effective rule over the territory of current Korea and saw the height of classical Korean culture, trade, science, literature, and technology. However, the dynasty was severely weakened during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-98) and the first and second Manchu invasions of 1636 nearly overran the Korean Peninsula, leading to an increasingly harsh isolationist policy for which the country became known as the 'hermit kingdom'. After the end of invasions from Manchuria, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace.

However, whatever power the kingdom recovered during its isolation further waned as the 18th century came to a close, and faced with internal strife, power struggles, international pressure and rebellions at home, the Joseon dynasty declined rapidly in the late 19th century. The Joseon period has left a substantial legacy to modern Korea; much of modern Korean etiquette, cultural norms, societal attitudes towards current issues, and the modern Korean language and its dialects derive from the culture and traditions of Joseon. The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul in South Korea and as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and China, is the alphabet that has been used to write the Korean language since the 15th century. It was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443, and is now the official script of both South Korea and North Korea, and co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China's Jilin Province.

In South Korea, Hangul is occasionally augmented by Chinese characters called Hanja; whereas in North Korea, Hanja are virtually nonexistent. Was an armed rebellion in Korea led by aggravated peasants and followers of the Donghak religion, a panentheistic religion viewed by many rebels as a political ideology. In 1894, the magistrate of Gobu, Jo Byeonggap, had created various bogus laws and forced the peasants to build reservoirs and settle in unowned lands in order to get rich from taxes and fines. In March, angered peasants allied under Jeon Bongjun and Kim Gaenam, beginning the Gobu Revolt. However, the Gobu revolt was suppressed by Yi Yongtae, and Jeon Bongjun fled to Taein. In April, Jeon gathered an army in Mount Baek and recaptured Gobu.

The rebels then proceeded to defeat governmental forces in Hwangto Pass and the Hwangryong River. Jeon then captured Jeonju Fortress and fought in a siege with Hong Gyehun's Joseon forces.

In May, however, the rebels had signed a truce with the governmental forces, and built agencies called Jibgangso that handled affairs in rebel-controlled areas. This somewhat unsteady peace continued throughout the summer.

The frightened government asked the Qing Dynasty for help, and it sent 2,700 soldiers to Korea. Japan, angered that the Qing government had not informed Japan as promised in the Convention of Tientsin, started the Sino-Japanese War. The war resulted in an expulsion of Chinese influence in Korea and also signaled an end for the Self-Strengthening Movement in China itself. Growing Japanese dominance in the Korean peninsula had caused anxiety for the rebels. From September to October, the Southern and Northern leaders negotiated over the plans for the future in Samrye. In October 12, a coalition army of Northern and Southern Jeobs were formed, and the army, numbering 25,000~200,000 (records differ), went on to attack Gongju. After a number of battles, the rebel army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Ugeumchi, and the rebels were again defeated in the Battle of Taein.

Hostility continued deep into the spring of 1895. The rebel leaders were captured in various locations in the Honam Region, and most were executed by a mass hanging in March. Korea under Japanese rule was the culmination of a process that began with the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876, whereby a complex coalition of Meiji government, military, and business officials sought to integrate Korea both politically and economically into the Empire of Japan, first as a protectorate through the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905, and then officially annexed in the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910. Japan brought to a close the Joseon period and Korea officially became an integral part of Japan.

Japanese rule ended in 1945. In 1965 these treaties were ultimately declared 'already null and void' by the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. Administration of the Korean people continued until Japan's defeat at the end of World War II, at which time Korea became an independent nation albeit divided under two separate governments and economic systems. The modernization and industrialization brought to the Korean Peninsula by the Japanese continues to be the subject of controversy between the two Koreas and Japan. Was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. The war arose from the division of Korea at the end of World War II and from the global tensions of the Cold War that developed immediately afterwards.

Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and—by agreement with the United States—occupied Korea north of the 38th parallel. Forces subsequently occupied the south and Japan surrendered. By 1948, two separate governments had been set up. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council recognized this North Korean act as invasion and called for an immediate ceasefire.

On 27 June, the Security Council adopted S/RES/83: Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the defense of South Korea, with the United States providing 88% of the UN's military personnel.

After the first two months of the conflict, South Korean forces were on the point of defeat, forced back to the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Inchon, and cut off many of the North Korean attackers. Those that escaped envelopment and capture were rapidly forced back north all the way to the border with China at the Yalu River, or into the mountainous interior.

At this point, in October 1950, Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war. Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951.

After these dramatic reversals of fortune, which saw Seoul change hands four times, the last two years of conflict became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel. The war in the air, however, was never a stalemate.

North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet aircraft were used in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their Communist allies. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners.

However, no lasting peace treaty has been signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war. Periodic clashes, many of which were deadly, have continued to the present.

Is a term used to refer to South Korea's postwar export-fueled economic growth, including rapid industrialization, technological achievement, education boom, large rise in living standards, rapid urbanization, skyscraper boom, modernization, successful hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympics and co-hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup. This growth was accompanied by a democratization and globalization that transformed the country from the destruction of the Korean War to a wealthy and developed country with a globally influential economy and prominent multinational conglomerates such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai. Also, the growth is very closely related to an $800 million aid Tokyo provided in compensation for Koreans forced into labour including comfort women and military service during the Japanese occupation in World War II, although the fact about the aid is scarcely recognized by, or is concealed for political reasons to Koreans.

More specifically, the term refers to the economic growth of Seoul, through which the Han River flows, although it is generally used in reference to the country as a whole. Also, the 'miracle' generally refers to the period between 1961 and 1996. The phrase comes from the 'Miracle on the Rhine', used to refer to the economic rebirth of West Germany after World War II, resulting partially from the Marshall Plan. The 'Miracle on the Han' is used to refer to the growth of postwar South Korea into the world's 11th largest economy and a role model for many developing countries in Asia.[3] Seoul's infrastructure was destroyed by the Korean War and millions lived in poverty at the time, with thousands of unemployed people struggling to fulfill basic needs. When General Park Chung-hee seized power in 1961, South Korea had a per capita income of less than $80 per year. During that time, South Korea was mostly dependent on foreign aid, largely from the U.S.A.

In exchange for South Korea's involvement in the Vietnam War.[4][5] Government's Saemaeul movement focused on developing rural Korea. The strong leadership of the government, though criticized as repressive and heavy-handed, and the effective use of cheap labor, served as a catalyst for the South Korean economy. In less than four decades, Seoul was transformed into a global city, a center of business and commerce in Northeast Asia and a highly developed economic hub, laying the grounds for an advanced technological and communications infrastructure.

Koreans consider this rapid growth a symbol of national pride and self-sufficience. Besides the Saemaeul movement, the Korean government carried out another effective economic development plan called the Five-Year Plan. There were more than five plans created, and they were designed to revive the economy.

Each of the plans contributed greatly to industrialization and enlarging the marketplaces of South Korea. The East Asian cultural sphere shares a Confucian ethical philosophy, Buddhism, political and legal structures, and historically a common writing system. The core regions of the East Asian cultural sphere are China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam, although Mongolia and parts of Central Asia are sometimes included.Western imperialism in Asia as presented in this article pertains to Western European entry into what was first called the East Indies. This was sparked early in the 15th century by the search for trade routes to China that led directly to the Age of Discovery, and the introduction of early modern warfare into what was then called the Far East. By the early 16th century the Age of Sail greatly expanded Western European influence and development of the Spice Trade under colonialism. There has been a presence of Western European colonial empires and imperialism in Asia throughout six centuries of colonialism, formally ending with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony East Timor in 2002.

The empires introduced Western concepts of nation and the multinational state. This article attempts to outline the consequent development of the Western concept of the nation state. The thrust of European political power, commerce, and culture in Asia gave rise to growing trade in commodities—a key development in the rise of today's modern world free market economy.

In the third century BCE, the Qin state emerged as the first great land-based empire in East Asia, but it quickly collapsed and was followed by the Han Empire. Han cultural identity became synonymous with 'China,' including an elite culture built around the Confucian classics and a common culture based on family-organized ancestor worship. The Romans consolidated their authority around the Mediterranean world and defined an even more expansive identity—a new concept of 'citizen' that eventually included all subjects of the Roman emperor.

These empires made it possible for their subjects to live more peaceful and predictable lives than previously known. As both the Han and Roman empires fully exploited the ecological limits of their economic base and human resources, they became more interested in consolidating power within these limits than expanding them. Each empire brought the provinces of their domains together into regimes of unprecedented scale and thereby enhanced the integration of local worlds into a common legal and cultural framework. In the 1980s, it had transformed its vast and inefficient agricultural sector, freeing its peasants from the confines of central planning and winning them to the cause of reform.

In the 1990s, it had likewise started to restructure its stagnant industrial sector, wooing foreign investors for the first time. These policies had catalysed the country's phenomenal growth. Instead, China had to take what many regarded as the final step toward the market, liberalizing the banking sector and launching the beginnings of a real capital market. Meiji Restoration, Meiji [Credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

(Digital File Number: cph 3b48623)]in Japanese history, the political revolution that brought about the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and returned control of the country to direct imperial rule under the emperor Meiji, beginning an era of major political, economic, and social change known as the Meiji period (1868-1912). This revolution brought about the modernization and Westernization of Japan. The leaders of the restoration, mostly young samurai from feudal domains historically hostile to Tokugawa authority, were motivated by growing domestic problems and the threat of foreign encroachment. Adopting the slogan 'wealthy country and strong arms' (fukoku-kyōhei), they sought to create a nation-state capable of standing equal among Western powers.

As expressed in the Charter Oath of 1868, the first goal of the new government, relocated to Tokyo (formerly Edo), was the dismantling of the old feudal regime. This was largely accomplished by 1871, when the domains were officially abolished and replaced by a prefecture system. All feudal class privileges were also abolished. In the same year a national army was formed, which was further strengthened in 1873 by a universal conscription law.

The new government also carried out policies to unify the monetary and tax systems, with the agricultural tax reform of 1873 providing its primary source of income.At the same time, a growing popular rights movement, encouraged by the introduction of liberal Western ideas, called for the creation of a constitutional government and wider participation through deliberative assemblies. Responding to these pressures, the government issued a statement in 1881 promising a constitution by 1890. In 1885 a Cabinet system was formed, and in 1886 work on the constitution began.

Finally in 1889 the constitution, presented as a gift from the emperor to the people, was officially promulgated. It established a bicameral parliament, called the Diet (gikai), to be elected through a limited voting franchise. The first Diet was convened the following year, 1890. Economic and social changes paralleled the political transformation of the Meiji period. Although the economy remained dependent on agriculture, industrialization was the primary goal of the government, which directed the development of strategic industries, transportation, and communications. The first railroad was built in 1872, and by 1890 there were more than 1,400 miles (2,250 km) of rail.

The telegraph linked all major cities by 1880. Private firms were also encouraged by government financial support and aided by the institution of a European-style banking system in 1882. These efforts at modernization required Western science and technology, and under the banner of 'Civilization and Enlightenment' (bunmei kaika) Western culture, from current intellectual trends to clothing and architecture, was widely promoted. Wholesale Westernization was somewhat checked in the 1880s, however, when a renewed appreciation of traditional Japanese values emerged. Such was the case in the development of a modern educational system which, though influenced by Western theory and practice, stressed the traditional values of samurai loyalty and social harmony.

The same tendency prevailed in art and literature, where Western styles were first imitated, and then a more selective blending of Western and Japanese tastes was achieved. By the early 20th century, the goals of the Meiji Restoration had been largely accomplished. Japan was well on its way to becoming a modern industrial nation. By Chōmin Nakae. A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government takes the form of a debate between a spokesman for Western ideals of democracy and progress, and an advocate for adherence to traditional samurai values. Their discussion is moderated by the imperturbable Master Nankai, who loves nothing more than to drink and argue politics. The fiction of the drinking bout allowed Chomin to debate freely topical political issues, in a discussion that offers an astute analysis of contemporary European politics and a prophetic vision of Japan's direction.