The West's grip on its majestic eastern empires was broken by Japan in the Second World War. Unwilling to realize that the age of European dominance had ended, in 1945 the Europeans hastened to reoccupy their Asian empires (Map XXII).
The first European colonial territory to gain its independence in the postwar period was India. When the Japanese began their conquest of southeast Asia in 1941, the century-old struggle for the independence of India from Britain was still underway. By 1942 the growth of civil disturbance had led to the imprisonment of its nationalist leaders. Faced by growing insurrection, in 1944 the British Labour Party - which had adopted a policy of anti-imperialism - promised independence for India if it gained power. The Labour Party having won the election of 1945, in 1947 India became independent, with Dominion status in the British Empire.
Unable to obtain agreement between the Indian Congress Party, led by Jawaharlal Nehru1 (1889-1964) and the Muslim League (founded 1907), led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah2 (1876-1948), the British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-79), was forced to agree to the tragic division of India between Hindu and Muslim. Against Gandhi's warnings, the Muslim areas of the Punjab in the northwest were joined with the eastern sector of Bengal to form Pakistan. Fifteen million people were uprooted. In the subsequent massive exchange of populations, more than 200,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs died. Out of partition arose the dispute over Indian-held, predominantly Muslim Kashmir, which has bedeviled Indian-Pakistan relations ever since. Partition also strengthened the Sikh demand for autonomy in the Punjab, and added to the discord between Sinhalese and Tamils in Ceylon. In January 1950 India became a democratic republic.
Fifty-seven years to the struggle for independence, many of them spent in British jails. His aim was to transform India into a social-democratic, secular, industrial state, with economic self-sufficiency as its goal. Realizing that population increase would swallow up whatever gains were made by industrialization, in 1951, a year of famine, he introduced India's first family-planning programme.
Refusing to take sides in the cold war, in 1955 Nehru was instrumental in convening a meeting of third world African, Asian and Latin American 'neutral' states at Bandung3 in Indonesia. By the 1970s these states had become the most politically powerful group at the United Nations. Communist China's reconquest of Tibet in the 1950s, as well as its invasion of India's northern territory in 1962, undermined Nehru's work for peace. To meet China's attack on northern India, he was forced to turn to the US for military aid. Earlier, in 1960, he had rid India of its last Portuguese colony, Goa. The princely states were also assimilated. In 1965 Pakistani and Indian forces clashed in Kashmir; on and off, they have continued to do so.4 As US sympathies were with India, Pakistan turned to China for military help.
In 1966 Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi5 (1917-84) succeeded him as prime minister. She is credited with the 'green revolution', which provided India with desperately needed food; for the first time widespread famine was banished. While adhering to her father's policy of neutrality, in practice she favoured the socialist-oriented Russians more than the capitalist-oriented Americans - state capitalism rather than private enterprise. Under her leadership in 1969-70, India won its second war with a much weaker Pakistan. In 1971 India signed a twenty-year treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union consistently supported India against Pakistan, and against China in its border conflict with India. In 1972 Indira Gandhi invoked emergency powers, for which, two years later, she was driven from office. Having returned to power, Indira was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for her government's attack in June 1984 on the Golden Temple at Amritsar in Punjab, the Sikhs' holiest shrine. In vengeance, thousands of Sikhs were slaughtered; clashes with the Sikhs have continued. Indira's son Rajiv Gandhi (1944-91) became prime minister in 1984. He was assassinated (allegedly by a Tamil) during an election campaign to regain power. In October 1999, India's leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee (b. 1924-) was re-elected to power.
With a population of 1,002,000,000 (one-sixth of the world's population), India is now second in numbers only to China, and is increasing its population at a faster rate. It has at its disposal both the atomic bomb (1974) and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (1989). Its swift defeat of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971 gave notice that India was a major power in Asia. Only India and Japan can seriously affect the moves of China or Russia in the East, and India has the scale and the military power, which Japan lacks. With the end of the cold war in 1991, and the break-up of the Soviet Empire, the relations between India and the US have improved. In March 2000 President Clinton visited India - the first visit by a US president in twenty-two years. With the opening up of foreign investment and freer markets, Nehru's state socialism has been exchanged for the market economy.
Because of its growth in numbers, and its lack of cohesion, India still lives a hand-to-mouth existence, with catastrophe not far away. With a social system based on religious values, and an appalling literacy rate, its wealth has increased only slowly over the past twenty years. Its industrial growth in 2000 was slower than that of its Asian neighbours; the same number of Indians live below the poverty line as they did half-a-century ago. The better times that Nehru promised have eluded India. Since 1991, when India chose the market economy over the planned state, progress has been made, but not enough to improve the living standards of most Indians. If India did not have a billion mouths to feed, its economic reforms this past decade might have made a deeper impression. Figures aside, wide-spread poverty in India seems to be a permanent condition. In 1999 its GDP per capita was $1,800 (purchasing power parity), in contrast to Japan's $23,400. Yet India has achieved self-sufficiency in food, its people are living longer, the rigidity of caste has been lessened and its middle class has grown.
The political outlook is more disturbing than the economic. Without a tradition of self-government on a national scale, and without a true national identity, India is in danger of succumbing to the ongoing religious, communal, linguistic and regional political rivalries. Demands for autonomy are made by the Sikhs, the Tamils and the Kashmiri; the Muslim minority feels threatened by the Hindu majority. In Assam in northwest India, in February 1993, thousands were killed in ethnic violence. In March, following the destruction by Hindus of a sixteenth-century mosque, bombings in Bombay and Calcutta took hundreds of lives. Since independence India has been at odds with Pakistan over Kashmir. In April 2001 there was fighting on the Bangladesh border. India has been burdened with an unending river of refugees from within and outside India. On an unprecedented scale, corruption is beginning to appear in the highest levels of government. The wonder about India is that it has managed to retain the democratic form of government introduced in 1950.
India's independence in 1947 was accompanied by the birth of Pakistan (the population in 2000 was 151 million), described in its constitution of 1956 as 'an Islamic Republic under the governance of Allah'. Inspired by the poet Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938), founder of the Muslim League, it was a new nation based on religious conviction rather than historical tradition. Consisting of two halves, located on opposite sides of India, and with entirely different linguistic and cultural traits, the new nation was governed from Karachi in the west.
Unlike democratic India, Pakistan has been governed for half its life by the military. In 1958, appalled at the disunity and disintegration of the state, General Ayub Khan seized power. The constitution was dissolved and 'Basic Democracy', a euphemism for military government was installed. Unable to do any better than the civilian government that had preceded him, in 1969 Ayub Khan was replaced by General Yahya Khan. Two years later, the growing conflict of interests between East and West Pakistan resulted in war. The eastern half, assisted by India, became Bangladesh. Following Britain's recognition of Bangladesh, Pakistan withdrew from the Commonwealth. The loss of East Pakistan resulted in Pakistan's return to civilian government under the western-educated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who introduced constitutional, social and economic reforms. In 1979 Bhutto was replaced by still another military government under General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who promised to introduce a state truly conforming to Islamic principles. In April 1979, a victim of the ongoing struggle for power, Bhutto was executed.
Following Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, more than three million Afghan refugees flooded into Pakistan (more than one million have remained there). Aided by the US, Pakistan's support for the Afghan Islamic mujahidin (who frustrated Soviet aims) grew. Russia's response was to draw closer to India, Pakistan's major enemy. The covert use of Pakistan by the US to strike at the Russian-sponsored regime in Afghanistan caused a deterioration of Indian-US relations.
Benazir Bhutto's (b. 1953-) appointment in 1988 as prime minister of Pakistan made her the first woman to lead a Muslim nation. She was dismissed by the military in 1990 for alleged corruption, but was returned to power in 1993. In November 1996, she was dismissed again, largely for the same reason. Nawaz Sharif replaced her. He began his second term as prime minister in February 1997. Under Sharif, as under his predecessors, the military, religious and political turbulence that has dogged Pakistan's steps since its inception, added to its three wars with India, have denied it the necessary stability for social and economic advance.
In May 1997, Nawaz Sharif met with the Indian Prime Minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, to declare a 'new era of friendship'. Unfortunately, in April 1999, the nuclear arms race between the two countries was escalated. In October, following the repulse of Pakistani guerrilla troops from India's side of the disputed state, Nawaz Sharif was ousted by a military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf. In January 2000 he was tried on criminal charges and was jailed. In December he was freed and went into exile in Saudi Arabia.
During the Second World War, neighbouring Nepal was virtually closed to the rest of the world. The traditional control of the government by the Ranas family ended in 1951. Political parties and constitutional monarchy were not legalized until 1990. Between 1994 and 1995 a communist government held power. A Maoist insurgency in recent years has claimed many lives.6 Ceylon (Sri Lanka) obtained its independence in 1948. Tibet was also closed to the outside world during the Second Word War. Having broken away from China in 1911, it was brutally reconquered by China in 1951. A systematic destruction of Tibetan culture followed; a communist government was installed in 1953. Since the revolt of 1959, when the Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans fled to India, any aspirations for Tibetan independence have been suppressed.
Following the liberation of India in 1945, the British yielded to Burmese demands for home rule. The Union of Burma7 came formally into existence on 4 January 1948. At that time the country was torn by internal rivalries from ethnic minorities and political factions. Having been the first to recognize Mao's victory in China in 1949, in 1960 the Burmese signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with the Chinese.
From the postwar Burmese struggle between communists and non-communists, there emerged - as a result of an army coup in 1962 - the communist military ruler Ne Win (b. 1911-). As constitutional president, Ne Win abolished the parliamentary system, and proclaimed the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (1974). By expelling three hundred thousand foreigners, he ended Indian and Chinese control of Burmese business and administration. Ne Win's harsh rule helped to impoverish his country. On his resignation in July 1988, power was seized by General Saw Maung. In 1989 Burma was renamed Myanmar. Although democratic forces triumphed in the election of May 1990 (the first in thirty years), the military refused to relinquish power. Opponents, such as Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, were placed under house arrest. Burma is an example of a rich country impoverishing itself through disunity and bad government. In May 1997 (with Indonesia's support and America's opposition), Myanmar became a member of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).8 Burma's population in 2000 was about 49 million.
With the end of the Japanese occupation of Malaya9 in 1945, a bitter struggle took place between the British and a communist-led insurrection. Not until Malaya became independent in 1957 within the Commonwealth of Nations was a peaceful, integrated, multi-racial society attained. In that year it was admitted to the UN. In 1963 Malaya with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak became the Federation of Malaysia. Thenceforth, until President Sukarno's fall from power in 1965, Indonesia waged an undeclared war against Malaysia. (The Philippines claimed Sabah until 1978.) Because of the growing tensions between ethnic Chinese (who dominated commerce) and ethnic Malays (who dominated politics), Singapore peacefully seceded and became a separate state in 1965. In 1967 Malaysia became one of the founding members of ASEAN. Like its neighbours, Malaysia suffered a recession in 1997-98. Under the leadership of Dr Mahathir bin Mohammad it declined help from the international community and recovered independently. In 2001 Malaysia's population was about 23 million, Singapore's about four million.
The postwar struggle for independence in French Indo-China followed an even more violent course. By the time the French returned in 1945, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam10 had all developed powerful communist movements demanding independence from France. As the result of a revolution that broke out in August 1945, North Vietnam became communist (Vietminh). Although the French granted autonomy to the monarchies of Laos and Cambodia (both neutral until the 1960s), they withheld it from Vietnam. Instead, Vietnam was divided into a communist North (Democratic Republic of Vietnam), and a French-US-supported non-communist South (eventually to be known as the Republic of Vietnam). Wide-spread insurrection against the French followed; supported by considerable US military aid, the French began a seemingly endless struggle against the communist Vietminh.
Despite American money and military advisers, French power in Vietnam was finally overturned with the decisive defeat of French troops by the North Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. At the conference at Geneva in the same year, Vietnam was divided once more at the 17th parallel into two zones: the communist northern half led by the guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), and the non-communist south (which became an independent republic in 1955) led by US-supported Ngo Dinh Diem (1901-63). In 1956 Diem renaged on his promise to hold the national elections called for by the Geneva Accord. As a result, northern-armed Vietcong guerrillas began their revolt against his unpopular rule in the South; they were backed by northern troops (armed by the Soviets and China) who began to infiltrate South Vietnam. Determined to contain the communist challenge, in 1963 the Americans began what would prove to be a disastrous intervention. Vietnam became a pawn in the much wider power struggle of the cold war.
On 2 November 1963, with the political situation in South Vietnam becoming desperate, the Americans connived with the Saigon military in the overthrow of President Diem. On 7 August 1964, the US Congress authorized the use of force in Vietnam after two US destroyers had supposedly been attacked in the Bay of Tonkin. In February 1965, with the whole of Vietnam threatened by 'communist tyranny', President Johnson made the fatal decision to send troops and planes to South Vietnam. The heavy fighting between communist and non-communist troops (supported by the US), coupled with massive bombing by the US of North
Vietnam as well as Vietcong positions in the south, caused the death of about four million Vietnamese (one in ten of the total population, which in 2000 was 82 million). More than two million Vietnamese fled, about one million to the US. Withdrawal of US forces, which had begun in 1969, ended in 1973. Having lost 58,000 troops, and unwilling to wage an all-out war for fear of drawing China into the conflict, the Americans withdrew.
They had fought their longest war and had lost it. For the first time, a third world country had defeated the army of the most powerful western industrial society. In 1975 the communist North conquered the South. In June 1976, the country was officially reunited. Its expansion into Cambodia and Laos in the late 1970s and early 1980s, resulted in a brief but intense border war with China. As living conditions deteriorated, thousands of Vietnamese became refugee boat people. In February 1994, partly as a result of the deterioration of its relations with China, and partly because Vietnamese changes in leadership resulted in a policy reorientation toward privatization, the US reversed its hostile attitude to Vietnam by ending its nineteen-year-old embargo on trade. In July 1995 it extended full diplomatic recognition to the communist government - a move that China considered encirclement and Russia did not applaud. In that year Vietnam was admitted to the UN. In 1999, China and Vietnam settled their dispute over borders and territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. In November 2000 President Clinton visited Vietnam, the first US president to do so.
The US-supported Cambodian government (the US had first intervened militarily in Cambodia in May 1966), which since 1970 had been fighting North Vietnamese communist troops, as well as Khmer Rouge communist guerrillas led by Pol Pot (1925-98), was the next to fall. Following the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom Penh in April 1975, and the overthrow of the US-backed government of Lon Nol, more than one-and-a-half million Cambodians were slain or died in enforced labour. Cambodia became the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, with Pol Pot as the premier. Civil war continued with heavy loss of life. Border fighting in 1978 between Cambodia and Vietnam led to Vietnam's invasion of both Laos and Cambodia. The defeat of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese in January 1979, and the seizing of Phnom Penh, was followed by a border war between the Vietnamese and China. A massive flight of Cambodians to Thailand took place. Prince
Norodom Sihanouk (b. 1922-), who was recognized by many Cambodians as their leader, fled to Beijing. In 1993, UN-sponsored elections were boycotted by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. A new constitution restored the monarchy, with Sihanouk as king. In August 1996 negotiations began between a breakaway faction of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian government. In 1997 tensions between the different political factions made stable government in Phnom Penh almost impossible. Pol Pot was ousted from power by the Khmer Rouge in 1997 and died the following year. Cambodia joined ASEAN on 30 April 1999. In 2000 its population was 12 million.
Although a Geneva Conference in 1962 had guaranteed the neutrality and independence of Laos, a chaotic political situation ensued out of which, despite US air support and military aid to the non-communists, the Laotian communists and their Vietnamese allies emerged triumphant. In trying to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail, American planes had made 580,000 bombing runs and dropped about 2 million tons of explosives over Laos. In 1973 a ceasefire ended US bombing. The Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 3 December 1975; the monarchy was abolished. In 1977 Laos signed a twenty-five year treaty of friendship with Vietnam. With help from Vietnam, the Democratic Republic remained in power for the next fifteen years. The Vietnamese Army did not withdraw from Laos and Cambodia until 1989. The massive flight of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which had begun in the 1940s, ended about the same time. In the early 1990s, Laos nominally abandoned communism for capitalism. It also sought to make friends with such former enemies as China, Thailand and the US. It would be difficult to imagine an economy that is in worse shape than that of Laos. In 1999 the GDP per capita was $1,300 (purchasing power parity) much of that from foreign aid. Laos joined ASEAN in July 1997. Its population was about 5 million in 2000.
Thailand11 (which changed its name from Siam in 1949) was never colonized by the western powers. Dominated by Japan in 1941, it was compelled to declare war against its traditional British, French and American allies. It openly became pro-western once the Japanese had been defeated. In 1954, with Pakistan and the Philippines, Thailand became a member of SEATO. In 1967 it became one of the founding members of ASEAN. In the 1960s to 1970s, with the Vietnamese occupying Laos and Cambodia, and the border threatened by refugees and Vietnamese troops, Thailand could no longer remain neutral. It provided air bases from which the US bombed North Vietnam and sent thousands of Thai troops to support South Vietnam.
Since absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932, military coups and growing corruption have become endemic in Thailand. Since the coup in 1977 by General Kriangsak Chomanan, bloodless coups by the military have alternated with democratic elections. In July
1995, Banharn Silpa-archa became prime minister; in November
1996, because of alleged corruption and incompetence, he was replaced by General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who inherited a balance of payments crisis and a dire economic situation. Since then border relations with Myanmar have worsened. A delicate balance between civilian and military rule continues. A predominantly Buddhist country, Thailand's 62 million people have been relatively free of the violence caused by separatist militias in Indonesia and the Philippines. Communist-led insurgencies have existed since the 1950s, but have never been strong enough to threaten the government. In July 1997 a deep recession in the Thai economy caused a crisis in Asian financial markets.
The fierce struggle for independence, which followed the surrender of Japanese forces in Vietnam in 1945, had its parallel in Indonesia where the nationalists were determined to rid themselves of Dutch rule. The Indonesian leader Achmad Sukarno (1901-70)12 co-operated with the Japanese throughout the war as the head of a puppet government. The arms which he subsequently used in his struggle against the returning Dutch were provided by the Japanese. It was not until 1949, after much blood had been shed, that the Dutch finally conceded defeat. An Indonesian republic was established in August 1949 with Sukarno as president for life. The Celebes, the Moluccas (in 2001 the scene of growing violence between Christians and Muslims) and parts of Borneo were annexed after the war. The western part of New Guinea remained under Dutch control until 1963, when it was annexed by Indonesia as Irian Jaya (the name was changed to West Papua in 1999). Sukarno's claims in the 1960s to Sarawak and Sabah were resisted by Malaysia.
In 1968 Sukarno was replaced by the more western-inclined head of the army, General Mohamed Suharto (b. 1921-), who brutally
Repressed both the communists (estimates vary from 300,000 to one million deaths) and the Islamic fundamentalists. He also ended hostilities against Malaysia, re-established close ties with the US and in 1966 rejoined the UN. In 1967 Indonesia became a member of ASEAN. In December 1976, with the collapse of Portuguese rule, Suharto annexed the largely Roman Catholic province of East Timor - an act condemned by the international community. He was re-elected for a sixth five-year term in 1993. In May 1998, with riots breaking out across the country, Suharto stepped down. Power was assumed by vice president B. J. Habibie. In October 1999, after 32 years of dictatorship, Abdurrahman Wahid (b. 1940-) became Indonesia's first democratically appointed leader.
Since then Indonesia has been plagued by violent uprisings, including those in Aceh, West Papua and East Timor. Accompanied by much bloodshed, East Timor gained its independence in 1999 only after UN forces (led by Australia) intervened. In the Indonesian part of Borneo a bloody battle is being fought between native Dayaks and Madurese. Amid the general turmoil, in June 2001 ex-president Suharto was placed under house arrest. Also on grounds of 'performance, attitude and policies' the Indonesian parliament voted to proceed with the impeachment of President Wahid. In the summer of 2001 he was replaced by Indonesia's vice president Megawaty Sukarnoputri (the daughter of Sukarno). Indonesia's relatively recent adoption of democracy is threatened. The most alarming outcome of its present troubles would be for 'the Giant of South Asia' (in 2000 Indonesia's population was 212 million) to disintegrate. Repercussions would be widespread.
In contrast to Burma and Indonesia, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines13 in December 1941 was fiercely resisted by the Americans and the Filipinos. Fulfilling a promise made by the US in 1934, the Republic of the Philippines came into existence on 4 July 1946. Since then the Philippines have been plagued by economic and ethnic troubles; communist insurgency has become widespread; Muslim separatists (the Moro National Liberation Front) in the southern islands have still to be pacified. In December 1972, with the political situation deteriorating, President Ferdinand Marcos (1917-89) introduced martial law; opposition parties were suppressed. Martial law was not lifted until 1981, after which the insurgents re-emerged. In danger of his life, Marcos fled the country in February 1986. After becoming president in 1986, with the aid of the American military, Maria Corazon Aquino (b. 1933-) survived several attempted coups. Until the US vacated the Subic Bay Naval Station in 1992, the Philippines were under the protection of the United States. A democratic form of government prevailed. Successful in negotiations with some of the Muslim secessionists, Aquino failed to overcome the communist insurgency. In February 1992, Fidel Ramos replaced her. He was followed by Joseph Estrada, who in November 2000 was impeached for corruption. His trial before the Senate was postponed indefinitely. By January 2001 mass protests in Manila had forced him to flee. With the help of the military, his vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, assumed power. In February, Estrada was still claiming to be the elected president. He was arrested in April 2001 accused of 'economic plunder'. He awaits trial. With communist and Muslim secessionist forces still active, instability reigns. (The population of the Philippines in 2000 was 80 million.)
Whatever south and southeast Asia's new alignment proves to be, its location (at one of the world's main crossroads), its numbers, its significance as a centre of the Islamic religion and its importance as a source of food, all ensure that it will play a major role in world affairs. It was to offset great power intervention in their domestic affairs that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed in 1967. This association largely replaced the earlier (1954) American-inspired SEATO agreement. It differed from SEATO in so far as it places stress not on military security, nor on containing communism, but on modernization. Its chief success has been in commercial and diplomatic collaboration.
In East Asia the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 set the stage for the civil war between communists and nationalists, which followed the Japanese surrender in 1945. Despite America's willingness to back Chiang Kai-shek (as Stalin did at the outset), the communists extended their control to northern China and overran much of Manchuria. Far from ignoring the peasantry as Marx had done, or of repressing them as Stalin had done, Mao looked upon the peasant as the core of the revolution. In January 1949, the communists entered Tientsin and Peking; Nanking, the nationalists' capital, fell in April. In the summer of 1949 with the help of the US Seventh Fleet, about two million non-communist refugees fled mainland China for Taiwan. For the next three decades the US regarded the nationalists on Taiwan as the legitimate government of China.
In September 1949, with Mao and Chou En-lai at its head, the People's Republic of China was officially proclaimed. The new regime was immediately recognized by the Soviet Union and its allies. In 1950 China made a thirty-year treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance with the USSR. In November of that year it intervened against the US in the Korean War.
By 1955 the communists had put to death about one million so-called 'traitors, counter-revolutionaries and bourgeoisie capitalists'. Whole social classes had been wiped out. Mao is said to have killed more of his own people than any other leader in history. The number maimed by him for life is beyond counting. No remorse was shown to the victims. The system of public accusation adopted by the communists, whereby the accused was forced to indulge in self-criticism, followed Chinese traditions, as did the brainwashing and thought control tactics. Many of those who responded to Mao's call (1956) to 'let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend', were subsequently killed or jailed as 'poisonous weeds'. In 1958, following the Russian and Indian examples of forced industrialization, Mao launched his Great Leap Forward. China would and could industrialize independent of the West. Chinese agriculture was forcibly collectivized. The outcome on both counts was disastrous. Millions died of famine. The economic development of China was retarded.
No sooner had the reverberations of the Great Leap Forward subsided than the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution14 (1966-70) began. By encouraging students, organized into units of Red Guards, to attack anyone who stood in the way of a continuing Cultural Revolution (Mao's 'little red book': Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong became the basis of communist indoctrination), Mao's aim was to rid himself of his critics and entrenched Party veterans who, he was convinced, were planning to betray the Socialist cause. The Cultural Revolution reduced some provinces of China to a state of anarchy. In 1969 Mao was compelled to use the army to restore order. Under its command, the exercise in cultural purification was ended. In condemning his critics, in his mindless terror, Mao set back China by twenty years. The upside of his rule is that he ended the West's exploitation of China and made China a great power with a permanent seat on the Security Council.
With the Cultural Revolution halted, many senior party members, army leaders and bureaucrats proceeded to reverse its effects. A start was made in 1971 with the purging of Marshal Lin Piao (Defense Minster and Vice-Chairman of the Republic), who had headed the purification movement. Lin died in mysterious circumstances while trying to defect to Russia later the same year. Nine months after Mao's death in 1976, his widow Chiang Ching was also called to account for her actions during the Cultural Revolution. In October 1977 the Gang of Four15 were arrested. Two years later Chiang Ching was given a deferred sentence of death (she committed suicide in jail). In 1978-79 political outcasts purged under Mao were rehabilitated.
Under the leadership of Hua Guofeng, the Party's new chairman and Deng Xiaoping16 (1904-97), vice chairman, there followed a shift in emphasis from class struggle and continuing revolution to mod-ernizafion. Deng had been a 'capitalist roader' all along: prosperity first, ideology last. The market system was resurrected. Many techniques of capitalist production such as wage incentives and the appointment of professional managers to factories and farms were introduced. Economic management was decentralized and agricultural production was stimulated by partial privatization. The effect on economic and political power was deep and widespread.
Deng's successor, Jiang Zemin (b. 1926-), the power behind the throne for the past several years, declared himself in favour of Deng's policy of privatization. At the fiftieth anniversary of communist rule in October 2000, Jiang's giant portrait was placed alongside those of Mao and Deng. He has become a revered figure in the Chinese hierarchy.
The changes in China's foreign relations since the Second World War have been as dramatic as its domestic upheavals. Immediately following Mao's triumph, China reasserted itself in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Chinese Turkistan. In 1950 the Red Army reclaimed Tibet (which had broken away during China's revolution of 1911). The Chinese also assisted the postwar revolutionary movements against the British in Malaya and the French in IndoChina. When in 1950 American-led UN forces in Korea approached the Chinese Yalu River, one quarter of a million Chinese were launched against them. The Chinese also became strong supporters of the North Vietnamese in their war against the South Vietnamese and their French and US supporters. In the Suez crisis of 1956, China openly supported Nasser.
Dominating all else in eastern Asia in the postwar period was communist China's relations with the Soviet Union. In 1950 Stalin rescinded the 1945 treaty with Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists in favour of one with the communists. This treaty decisively changed the balance of power in Asia. The first publicly expressed rift between the Chinese and the Russians came in 1960 at the Moscow International Conference of Communist Parties. Three years later the Chinese condemned Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence with the West. Paradoxically, despite centuries of rivalry and tension, in 2001 Russia was helping to arm China.
The Americans have had a similar love-hate relation with the Chinese.17 After Mao's victory in 1949 they sought to isolate communist China from the rest of the world. In 1954 President Eisenhower's government undertook to defend Taiwan from armed incursions from the mainland. Nuclear war was threatened. Not until 1967 did China possess the hydrogen bomb. In 1971, with a changed outlook on the part of the US, the Chinese People's Republic became a member of the United Nations in place of Taiwan. Following President Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972, US liaison offices were established there. In December 1978, after thirty years of estranged relations, they established normal diplomatic ties. All the preconditions demanded by China were met: the US terminated its formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, abrogated the 1954 defence treaty that committed the US to defend the island and removed its troops.
As a result of Nixon's second journey to China in 1977, Sino-American relations improved still more. By the late 1980s, China had become one of the world's largest economies. US business people were lured by the prospect of a limitless Chinese market - as they had been in the late nineteenth century. The Americans eagerly competed with each other in trying to satisfy China's needs. Only with the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in June 1989, did Sino-US relations experience a setback. They remained on a downward course18 until friendly overtures were made by the Bush and Clinton administrations.
A major challenge to western political as well as economic interests in East Asia must ultimately come from China - now one of the fastest growing economies in the world. After two centuries of weakness and humiliation, China now seeks the status and prestige it feels it deserves. Not for much longer will it tolerate the United States, Europe and Japan deciding world priorities. It will not accept international rules in which it had no voice. A country that claims historical right to the entire South China Sea, including the Paracel and the Spratly Islands (that lie along one of the most strategic shipping routes in the world, and harbour untapped oil and natural gas reserves); that waged a punitive war against Vietnam in 1979; that attacked the Vietnam Navy in the Spratly Islands in 1988; that is rapidly elevating the power of the military to the top of its social scale; that possesses nuclear arms (though China lacks the naval weaponry to match either the combined efforts of its neighbours, or of Russia and the US); that sells weapons of mass destruction to 'rogue' countries such as Iran; that threatens Taiwan; and violates human rights - a country that can do all these things is not very reassuring. China might not present an immediate threat to the West or its eastern neighbours, but if it should seek hegemony in East Asia, or challenge other countries' claims to the oil and gas of Central Asia, and the islands of the South China Sea, it could be the cause of a second cold war.
Because of its history, China will remain a difficult country to live with. It already expresses many grievances. It condemns American meddling in Chinese affairs. While Washington berates Beijing over human rights violations, it remains oblivious of the equal or worse violations taking place in Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Kuwait, Israel and Egypt. (In 1997 France broke ranks with the US over its condemnation of China on human rights.) A civilization that is almost five thousand years old does not want to be told what to do by a country as young as the US. It resents the recent visits of the Dalai Lama and the President of Taiwan to the US. It speaks of the threat of encirclement as Germany did before the Second World War. While the US has promoted the extension of NATO to Russia and east European countries, and membership of ASEAN for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, until November 1999 it had deliberately blocked China's entry into the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Relations between the two countries worsened after America's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 7 May 1999 and US accusations that China had been spying on America's nuclear-weapons programme. Despite strained relations over the landing of a US spy plane in China, China (and Taiwan) was admitted to the WTO in 2001.
It is not only the Russians and the Americans who have strained relations with China; many southeast Asians look upon the Chinese living in their communities (the total is thought to be between 50 and 60 million) as a possible threat. The wealth and influence of the Chinese living in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam far exceeds their numbers.19 The GNP of Chinese living abroad in 2001 was larger than that of mainland China with a population of 1.2 billion. Their investments in mainland China exceed those of the Americans and the Japanese. They provide much of the capital and business talent fuelling China's drive to modernization. While in the summer of 1996 China was threatening to invade Taiwan, one of the island's largest firms was announcing plans to invest further billions of dollars on the mainland. With the exceptions of Japan and Korea, the Chinese dominate the economies of every country on the Asian side of the Pacific rim.
China has weaknesses as well as strengths. There are signs that the economy is slowing down. China, like India, is poor and many rural Chinese are getting poorer. To keep 1.2 billion people alive drains the country of whatever improvements it has achieved. It is a country about which one can never predict. Rebellion is always in the present tense. Chinese unity, it is said, is as strong as a handful of sand. The Chinese bureaucracy continues to be a dead weight. The country faces ethnic, religious, social and political challenges. In 2001 the religious sect Falun Gong was seen by Chinese leaders as a threat to its social stability. In January of that year, members of the sect protested government persecution by setting themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square. Although its foreign relations are improving, several of its borders are disputed. Meanwhile it continues a love-hate relationship with the US.
Taiwan, since 1949 has remained economically and militarily strong. Its effect upon the world economy is greater than that of mainland China. It has powerful armed forces and is protected from the mainland by wide and difficult waters. The election in 1978 of Chiang Kai-shek's eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo (following his father's death in 1975), stiffened Taiwan's resistance to communist China's demands for reunification. In 1987 marshal law was lifted after thirty-eight years; in 1991 forty-three years of emergency rule ended. Taiwan now has a democratic form of government.
Despite growing threats being made by Beijing, Taiwan's 22 million people are unlikely to lose their independence by force. In any event, the major US concessions sought by communist
China regarding Taiwan have already been made. The US is on record that there is only one China. To further confuse an already confusing situation, in April 2001 President Bush stated that America has a duty to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. Most observers believe that as long as Taiwan refrains from declaring its independence, and shuns nuclear weapons, the problem of reunification might drag on well into the twenty-first century. In March 2000, Chen Shui-biam was elected as Taiwan's next president. As expected, his election was protested vigorously by Beijing.
The occupation of Japan in 1945 by the US gave the Americans an opportunity to express their innate messianism.20 A new constitution of parliamentary rule was established. Contrary to Japanese tradition, which recognized a separation of executive, legislative and judicial power, the constitution was based on the principal of judicial supremacy. The system of law, which hitherto had drawn its inspiration from the Germans and the French, was forced into an Anglo-American mould. Shinto ceased to be the state religion; the emperor was divested of his divinity and of any responsibility for a war waged in his name; the army and navy were disbanded; women were given the vote and equal legal status with men; compulsory education was extended to nine years; many existing school textbooks of history and geography were destroyed; the number of universities was increased; 40 per cent of the land under cultivation was confiscated and redistributed. The settled pattern of family and succession laws also underwent radical change. Under the new constitution of 1947 Japan formally renounced war.
Since the 1950s Japan has become the industrial giant of the East. Ignoring western advice, it reintroduced a prewar model of economic development of its own making. In the 1970s and 1980s a great deal of US real estate and industry passed to Japanese ownership and control.21 At the same time Japan played a vital role in the financing of the US government. By the 1990s, its total productivity was second only to that of the US; its branch factories had invaded the manufacturing centres of the western world; its trade surpluses were unparalleled.
Harsh criticism of Japanese trade policy in the 1990s by the US encouraged Japan to seek closer ties with China and the countries of East Asia. The change began with the treaty of peace and friendship ratified with China in October 1978, which ended a state of war that had existed between the two nations since 1931. (In August 1993, the Japanese government made a much awaited apology to China for its actions in the 1930s and 1940s.) Despite China's lingering animosity toward the Japanese, it signed an eight-year trade agreement with Japan in 1978 (and extended it since then). Japan became one of China's largest trading partners. In 2001 Japan's sales to Asia were greater than those to the US. They were much more than those made to the EU. Unlike in the 1980s, in the 1990s there has also been a shift in the share of Japan's foreign direct investment from the US and parts of Europe, to east and southeast Asia. Until the turnaround, about 50 per cent of Japanese direct foreign investment has been made in North America. In making available to China its economic and technological resources, Japan is altering the balance of power in East Asia.
The stronger Japan has become, the greater the emphasis placed upon its achievements since the war. Changes introduced by the Americans during their six years and eight months occupation (in religion, politics and education) are being reassessed. Despite its pacifist constitution, the martial values of traditional Japan are back in favour. Calls for rearmament are growing. Some of the war criminals executed in Tokyo after the Second World War are being rehabilitated as heroes. Protests against US troops garrisoned on Japanese soil are growing. Today, Japan seeks a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Given Japan's limitations in material resources, area and population (127 million in 2001), its tremendous burst of energy since the 1960s may have run its course. From 1992 to 1996 it had almost zero economic growth. Its world-beating industries are moving offshore. Certainly the giant gains made by the Japanese in the world economy cannot be disassociated from a perilous vulnerability to world forces. No major country is more dependent upon the world economy than Japan. Nor can Japan's gains be disassociated from its present mountain of debt. Demographically, Japan is ageing; the traditional Japanese work and savings ethics are being eroded by demands for a higher standard of living. Unless Japan can recover some of its old economic robustness, the longterm prospects do not look good. Fortunately, it still possesses the necessary human qualities to permit its recovery - as it has done so many times before. In April 2001 Junichiro Koizumi became
Japan's prime minister. In his popular appointment, many Japanese believe they have made a new start.
Complicating Japan's relations with the US have been America's relations with Korea. Following the Korean War, Korea became divided, with the largely Russian-equipped and - trained communist forces in the north, and American and South Korean forces in the south. In 1968 North Korea seized the US intelligence ship Pueblo and imprisoned its crew for eleven months. In 1969, it shot down a US reconnaissance plane. Although talks aimed at the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea began in 1972, and were given a fresh start in the mid-1980s, little has been achieved. Officially the two Koreas are still formally at war with each other. Until his assassination by a member of his government in October 1979, South Korea was governed by General Chung Hee Park, who had himself seized power in a military coup in 1961. Widespread student unrest in 1987 resulted in a new and more democratic constitution being proclaimed. Kim Yung Sam, elected in 1993, was the first civilian president since 1961. In 1991 both Koreas joined the UN. In March 1993, North Korea caused a stir by withdrawing from the Nuclear nonProliferation Treaty, designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. Since August 1994 negotiations have continued between the US and North Korea on the nuclear issue. The dictator of North Korea, Marshal Kim il-Sung 'the Great Leader', who had ruled for more than forty years, died in July 1994. He was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Il, who was named secretary of the communist party in 1997.
In 1995 the leaders of North Korea admitted their 'temporary' inability to feed their people. Since then the outside world, including South Korea, Europe, the US and Japan, has provided aid. But US hopes that the food crisis would make the North Koreans more amenable to discussing nuclear arms limitations and human rights have not been realized. Nor has the crisis furthered talks about the reunification of South Korea's 47 million people with North Korea's 22 million. Aid sent by South to North Korea has been received grudgingly. Those who hoped that North Korea's crisis might result in the overthrow of the communist regime have been disappointed; there have been no signs of rebellion. All the great powers, including China, have a stake in keeping North Korea stable. In December 1997, helped by government scandal and financial crises, democrat Kim Dae-Jung was elected president of South Korea. In 1998, North Korea's firing of a missile over Japan galvanized the debate in Japan and America about missile defences. In October the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea. Britain announced the opening of diplomatic relations. In June 2000 a historic meeting took place between the leaders of North and South Korea.
In order to obtain some of the benefits that would accompany an Allied victory, in February 1945, Turkey declared war on Germany. With the end of hostilities, Turkey was pressured by Russia to place the Turkish Straits - Russia's gateway from the Black to the Mediterranean Sea - under Soviet control. Only Allied intervention at Potsdam in 1945 saved Turkey from having to yield to Russia's demands. Until 1948, Turkey relied on Britain to protect it from renewed Russian claims. In 1948 the US (under the Truman Doctrine of containing communism) took upon itself the responsibility of keeping both Turkey and Greece out of the Russian camp. By 1952 Turkey (and Greece) had abandoned Kemal Ataturk's neutrality and had become an important bastion of NATO's defences.
Turkey continued to honour its NATO obligations until the age-old feud between the Greek majority and the Turkish minority on the island of Cyprus came to a head in the summer of 1974. Reacting to a pro-Greek attempt to bring about Enosis (union) with Greece, the Turks occupied the northern part of the island. In consequence, the government in Athens fell and Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war. Yielding to Greek influence, the US Congress ceased to supply arms to Turkey. Turkey responded by ordering US NATO personnel out of its country. By the summer of 1978 the US arms embargo was lifted and Turkey (with NATO's second biggest land army) was back within the western fold.
In the 1990s it was not world affairs but the increasingly bitter internal struggles for power among Turkey's ever-warring factions and sects that threatened the life of the critically weak Second Republic formed in 1961. Although some stability was restored with the return of civilian power in 1983 (marshal law imposed in 1978 ended in 1984, the state of emergency in 1988), brutal fighting causing thousands of deaths between Turks, Kurds and Armenians has continued to the present day. Many Turks have avoided their country's economic woes, and religious and ethnic tensions, by migrating to Germany. Following the Gulf War in 1990 Turkey was besieged by thousands of Kurds who fled Iraq. Clashes between Turks and Kurds caused heavy casualties. The Kurds retaliated to Turkish military action by attacking Turkish diplomatic missions in western Europe. In June 1996, although denounced by the Arab world, a military accord was signed by Israel and Turkey. In 1997 Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the first Islamist elected to lead secular Turkey, resigned under pressure from the military. Tansu Ciller (who had preceded him as prime minister) replaced him. Turkey's electoral system makes strong government (outside the military) unlikely. Since 1960 the military has removed the prime minister from office three times. In June 1999 Bulent Ecevit became prime minister for the fifth time. Two major earthquakes in northwest Turkey in 1999, followed by an earthquake in Greece, have improved bilateral relations. In 1999, following its rejection in 1997, Turkey was invited to apply for membership in the EU. Turkey remains the most populous Islamic country in the Middle East with a population of about 60 million in 2000.
Anticipating the French promise of freedom (1936), in 1944 Syria22 (16.4 million in 2000) unilaterally declared itself an independent republic. A struggle followed which resulted in the French bombardment of Damascus and the loss of hundreds of lives. Only by the intervention of the United Nations in 1946 was Syria able to rid itself of French control.
On 14 May 1948, the same day that the Jewish state of Israel was created, Syria (with Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Arabs) declared war upon the new Zionist state. Jewish arms having triumphed, in February 1949 Egypt was forced to sign a general armistice agreement with Israel; Jordan and Syria followed suit. In 1958 Syria joined Egypt in a United Arab Republic. Because of unreconcilable differences the union was dissolved in 1961. In the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Syria lost the Golan Heights. Rearmed by the Soviet Union, in 1973 in the fourth Arab-Israeli War, Syria joined Egypt in an attack on Israel. Following America's intervention on Israel's side, it was defeated again. In July-August
1973 an army plot to kill President al-Assad was suppressed. In
1974 Syria and Israel signed an agreement in Geneva that ended the fighting. Israel pulled back to the 1967 ceasefire line; a buffer zone was established and patrolled by UN troops. In 1976 Syria sent forces into Lebanon in an attempt to end the country's civil war. In February 1982 an uprising of Islamic fundamentalists took place at Hamah. It was led by the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical religious and political organization founded in 1928 in Egypt. The uprising was crushed; thousands of the insurgents were killed. On 6 June 1982, in response to terrorist attacks, Israel invaded Lebanon. Syrian troops were pushed back, the fighting ended with a ceasefire. The Golan Heights were annexed by Israel, which proceeded to establish Jewish settlements there. In 1990 Syria joined the Allies in the Gulf War. Since then interminable negotiations have gone on (especially in December 1999) concerning a peace settlement in the Middle East. Faced with Israel's refusal to evacuate occupied territory, Syria's president Hafez al-Assad remained inflexible. The Syrian government has been accused by the US of sponsoring international terrorism.
In January 2000, peace talks between the US and Syria ended inconclusively. In June, President Assad died and was replaced by his son Bashar.
Lebanon (population in 2001 of 4.2 million) gained its independence from the French at the same time that Syria did (1946). Since the 1950s it has been the scene of invasion, civil war, violence and terrorism. In July-October 1958, at the request of the Lebanese president, US troops intervened to prevent a civil war. In the civil war of the mid-1970s - in which Arab Muslims contested Arab Christians for power - fifty thousand people were killed. Hostilities continued. Raids upon Israel by Palestinians in Lebanon caused Israel to invade in 1978 and 1980. In June 1982, in an attempt to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, Israel invaded again by land, sea and air. Syria entered the fray on 9 June, but was defeated, losing planes and anti-aircraft missile batteries. At the cost of thousands of lives (including the Sabrah and Shatila massacres of Palestinian refugees by Israel's allies) Beirut was captured and the PLO driven from Lebanon. Since then the Israelis have had to contend with the equally vicious hostility of the two main Islamic parties, Hamas and Jihad-al Islami, as well as the Hezbollah Shi'ite militia. In September 1982 president Bashir Jemayel was assassinated. In October 1983, hundreds of US and French peacekeepers were killed by Arab terrorists in Beirut. The chain of violence has escalated rather than diminished.
With the breakdown of all order in Lebanon in the 1980s, terrorist bombing and hostage-taking became common. In July 1993, Israel's attacks on southern Lebanon caused two hundred thousand Lebanese to flee their homes. The bombing by Israel of Lebanon and its infrastructure continues. Because of growing casualties and increased pressure from Hezbollah guerillas, Israel withdrew its ground troops from Lebanon in May 2000.
War and discord also marked the administration of the British mandate in the Middle East. Despite British efforts to resist free immigration of Jews into Palestine, by 1945 the Jewish proportion of the population of Palestine had become larger still. Israel's population in 2000 was 5 million, about one-fifth non-Jewish.
On 14 May 1948, the British, unable to find a peaceful solution to the Arab-Jewish problem, relinquished their mandate to the United Nations. The outcome of the war that followed was the expansion of Israel's frontiers and the dispersal of more than one million Palestinian Arabs to Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon and Jordan the arrival of so many Palestinian refugees seriously upset the political balance between existing groups (Map XXIII).
US intervention in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 on Israel's side23 was met by the Arab world with an oil embargo under which the Arab nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)24 reduced their production. Although America and the rest of the world were able to fall back on non-OPEC supplies, the outcome was a serious dislocation of the US and the world economies.
World History
