L3 - Geopolitics

Mandate of Heaven

the religious belief that the rulers of Chinese dynasties were ordained by heaven

when they lost the mandate, their dynasty fell

Yuan Dynasty

the Chinese dynasty ruled by the Mongols

after the division of the Mongol Empire, this khanate became a Chinese dynasty

Manchu Dynasty

the last Chinese dynasty

it was ruled by people from Manchuria

lost the first Sino-Japanese War which was about influence over Korean Peninsula

Japan gained control and ran Korea as a police state

Khuomintang

Chinese Nationalists led a revolution to end the Chinese dynastic rule in 1911

Communist Party of China (CPC)

inspired by Soviet Revolution, Mao Zedong founded

Second Sino-Japanese War

the Kuomintang (KMT) and CPC allied with the USA and Soviet Union against the Japanese in World War II

for the Chinese this was the blank

Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and helped …

defeat the Imperial Japanese

Mao Zedong

successful in taking over China in 1949 and creating the Peoples Republic of China (PRC)

The KMT retreated to Taiwan and set up …

a government in exile, the Republic of China (ROC)

After Japanese defeat in WWII,

Korean was freed and divided into two countries, much like Germany

the Soviet Union installed a communist dictatorship in North Korea that still exists

In 1950, North Korea invaded

South Korea with Soviet and Chinese help

the US led the Unite Nations in the Korean War

Korean War

North Korea invades south Korea, the USA fights back to the point of victory until Communist China enters the war for North Korea

the end of the fighting is a stalemate at approximately the pre-war boundaries

a ceasefire is called and it becomes a frozen conflict

the border is now an armistice line called the Demilitarized zone

we were particularly worried about communist expansion to Japan

Frozen Conflict

a war where the active fighting has stopped, but no treaty has been signed

the fighting can technically restart at any time

Armistice Line

an agreement between two sides to stop fighting, but not technically end the war

In 1989, anti-communist protests in Tiananmen Square

resulted in the massacre of several thousand protesters

these protests failed, unlike those in Eastern Europe that were successful

China Proper

eastern half of China where the majority of population lives

dominant ethnicity is Han Chinese

The Chinese Frontier

the autonomous regions of China (Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia) that are traditionally outside of the Han Chinese ethnic core

Tibet

ethnically Tibetans

would like to be free from China once again

the blank diaspora engages in diaspora politics, lobbying powerful countries to help

Xinjiang

a Turkic region where most Uighurs are Sunni Muslim

millions of Muslims are currently being detained in concentration camps and forcibly secularized

former Mongol khanate

Inner Mongolia

a region populated by ethnic Mongols

former Mongol khanate

Hong Kong

a British port city that was gained after the Opium Wars, which were fought by the British to ensure they could continue selling opium in China

it returned to China in 1977, but has a separate system of government other that communism

protests going on now are about extradition treaty that would allow the Chinese Communists to arrest and deport dissidents in the city and take them back to mainland China

Macau

a former Portuguese port city

it returned to China in 1999 under a separate system of government kind of like Hong Kong

it is known as the Las Vegas of Asia

major gambling center

After WWII,

China claimed the seas inside the nine-dash line

this claim is counter to the international Law of the Sea

it defines ‘national waters’ as Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) as the ocean 200 nautical miles off a country’s coast, or half way between them and another in the case the distance is less than 200

to strengthen its claim to these waters, China is building artificial islands