Penn Asian Review Volume 8 Spring 2018

PENN ASIAN REVIEW VOLUME 8 | SPRING 2018

A UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA UNDERGRADUATE PUBLICATION

Cover photo: Amy Kim Editor photos: Julio Sosa Volume design: Weizhen Sheng Article layout: Patricia Cabuso

Volume 8, Spring 2018

PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Penn Asian Review especially thanks: Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

GSRC

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF !

Dear readers of PAR, I am thrilled to present you with the eighth volume of the Penn Asian Review. This year has been a critical year of transformation for our journal, as we have expanded the depth and scope of our coverage of various Asia related issues, encompassing scholarship from different

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Hyejin Krista Ryu

schools at Penn, and tripling the number of submissions received. From a journal that only covered East Asia, we have extended our coverage to Southeast Asia and South Asia. From a journal that was limited to

undergraduates from the School of Arts and Science at Penn, we have grown to reach graduate students at the Wharton School, and the Law School. Furthermore, our efforts to transform the journal into a truly pan-Asian journal that all students at Penn can enjoy allowed us to newly obtain the endorsement and sponsorship of research centers and institutes on campus, including the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and the James Joo-Jin Kim Program in Korean Studies.

I would like to thank the old and new members of the editorial board who helped me on the journey to transform PAR. The significant increase in scale and scope would not have been manageable without the passion of our dedicated members. I also thank the authors for their excellent scholarship and cooperation with our editing processes. Finally, in addition to the aforementioned new sponsors, I would like to thank our original sponsors, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization, SAC, and PubCo. I hope you enjoy our new volume with articles on both historical and contemporary topics on Asia, and I wish PAR can help contribute to the exchange of knowledge, awareness, and interest in the region at the University of Pennsylvania.

Editor-in-Chief Hyejin Krista Ryu Krista is currently pursuing a dual-degree in Master of Business Administration at the Wharton School and a Master of Arts in International Studies at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Seoul, Krista has worked and lived in a number of Asian cities, including Beijing, Bangkok, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur, which strengthened her interest and desire to pursue both academic and professional opportunities in East and Southeast Asia. She obtained her BA in Political Science at Stanford University focusing on Chinese political economy, and worked for the Boston Consulting Group in Southeast Asia prior to Penn. 

MESSAGE FROM THE DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF !

Dear readers,

DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Elaine Lee

Welcome to our eighth volume of the Penn Asian Review, and thank you for your interest in reading! PAR’s mission has always been the promotion of academic and intellectual engagement with topics related to Asia, a region with immensely rich legacies and international prominence. Come every annual publication, we strive to select and present articles that employ self-reflective and critical analysis to original research.

When it comes to student-run journals, the impact of such a publication as this one comes down to the readership. On top of the hard work of the wide range of editors on PAR board, the interest of students, faculty, and non-Penn community members in our journal attests to the value of scholarship and awareness of different interests.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Elaine Lee Elaine Lee is a junior in the College majoring in international relations and double minoring in philosophy and East Asian area studies. Her academic interests include cyberwarfare, national security, asymmetric warfare, and political theory on sovereignty and democratization. On campus, she is also involved in political science research on militant group alliances, and piano performance for chamber music ensembles.

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITING DIRECTOR: Amy Kim

Amy grew up attending an American school in Seoul, Korea. She commissioned as a U.S. Naval Officer upon receiving her B.S. in business administration from UC Berkeley. She served on two forward-deployed warships in Japan as a Surface Warfare Officer.

She also coordinated security cooperation activities with West African militaries while working for U.S. Naval Forces Africa in Naples, Italy. She is currently pursuing her MA in International Studies and MBA at Penn.

Susan Radov is an editor for the China Section of Penn Asian Review. She is a junior in the College, with a major in Cultural Anthropology and minor in Chinese Studies. She is particularly interested in the cultural and political changes of modern China, such as: the Confucian elements of Xi JinPing’s rhetoric, the growth of Chinese urbanization, the strength of language policy in provinces, the status of relations with the United States, and the soft power mechanisms of the Confucius Institutes.

EDITING DIRECTOR: Vedica Kant

Vedica Kant is a student at the Lauder Institute where she is pursuing an MBA (Wharton) and an M.A. in International Studies (Lauder). Vedica also has an M.Phil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford. She has a broad interest in the history of the the Ottoman Empire, the Indian subcontinent and the Indian Ocean world. She is the author of the book 'If I die here, who will remember me?: India and the First World War’.

Patricia is a sophomore in the College majoring in Communication and minoring in Cinema and Media Studies. She enjoys studying media effects and film history and theory. In her free time, she volunteers with her brothers in the Alpha Phi Omega co-ed service fraternity and watches films as her budget allows.

DIRECTOR OF FINANCE: Czarina Lokin

EDITING DIRECTOR: Susan Radov

COPY EDITING DIRECTOR: Patricia Cabuso

Czarina is a sophomore studying Finance, Management, and Math.

She has been on PAR board for 2 years now, serving as the Director of Finance. Outside of PAR, she is an active member of Penn Philippine Association and Wharton Asia Exchange. In her free time, she likes to work out and try new restaurants.

John G. Grisafi is a second-year MA student (graduating in 2018) in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, concentrating in Korean Studies. His research focuses on the history and politics of religion and ideologies in modern Korea.

John is currently Director of Public Relations for Penn Asian Review and previously served as Editor-in-Chief.

MARKETING /IT MANAGER: Weizhen Sheng

Weizhen is a sophomore studying NETS (Networked & Social Systems Engineering), with interests in data science and analytics.

She is currently serving as Marketing/IT Manager for PAR. Weizhen is also involved with Dining Philosophers (compsci club), Wharton Asia Exchange, and Penn Yalla (a Middle-Eastern dance troupe). In her free time, she enjoys reading and visiting cafes.

Jia Wei is a sophomore in Wharton studying Global Analysis and Actuarial Science, and minoring in East Asian Studies/Japanese.

She is an associate editor in the Japan and Southeast Asia sections.

She is a Chinese Malaysian, and hopes to study abroad in Tokyo. At Penn, she is involved with Penn Lions, Wharton Global Research and Consulting, and Wharton Asia Exchange. With a love of reading and a hunger for knowledge, she is happy to learn and grow with PAR.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Ji Yoon

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS: John G. GrisaďŹ

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Jia Wei Teo

Ji is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences studying History and Political Science. She is an associate editor in the Korea section, and is especially interested North Korean history and modern politics. She is also an Africana Studies minor, and is currently studying Korea-Africa and Sino-Africa relations.

Sabrina Ochoa is a freshman from Boynton Beach, Florida majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and minoring in East Asian Languages and Civilizations with a concentration in Korean Studies. At Penn Asian Review, she serves as an Associate Editor for the Korea/East Asia section. Her interests include writing, literature, and publishing in all forms. She works for the Daily Pennsylvanian, F-Word, and at the Kelly Writers' House.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Sabrina Ochoa

Kristy Hsi is a member of the Class of 2019 in the College studying English and Criminology with a minor in Classical Studies. She just recently joined the Penn Asian Review as an Associate Editor in the East Asian section. Kristy is very interested in exploring the relationship between Chinese-Taiwanese identities, especially through the waves of immigration that occurred in Taiwan in the 20th century. On campus, she is also involved in the Penn Taiwanese Society, Penn Writer's Workshop, Penn Speech and Debate, and being a DJ on the side.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Megan Everts

Megan Everts is a freshman studying International Relations in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is specifically interested in East Asia and would like to study abroad in Japan or Korea in the future.

In addition to PAR, she is involved in Penn Model Congress, PennSID, and CSSP. In her free time, she enjoys reading and learning calligraphy.

Paramita is a freshman from New Delhi, India. From a young age, she has been passionate about Applied Healthcare and Economics, having worked on organ donation, health economics of dementia and organizational health policy. She is interested in cultural and regional dynamics in pressing Asian issues (and in tea!) At Penn, some of her involvements include the Wharton Undergraduate Healthcare Club, Wharton Asia Exchange and Penn Curling.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Sheil Sarda

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Kristy Hsi

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Paramita Mishra

Sheil is an undergraduate dual degree student studying Computer Science and Finance in the Jerome Fisher program. Sheil is passionate about tackling sustainability issues in developing countries like India, where he travels to frequently. In his free time, Sheil enjoys reading non-fiction literature, or tinkering in the engineering lab.

Table of Contents East Asia 14

18

Major Foreign Impact on North Korea’s Foreign Policies: Origin of Division, Major Policy Evolution, and the Future Yuzhou Li

Examining Japanese colonization of Korea through Realism and Constructivism: Studying Imperialism in the Context of East-West Dichotomy, and Relation between Middle and Great Powers in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Elaine Lee

28 36 46

Tracing Traditional Roots in Modern Korea: A Comparison between “I Got a Boy” and Korean Traditional Vocal Music Sai-hyun Genie Kim

The Landscape of Local Foundations in China – Trends, Challenges, and Future Perspectives Minghui Fu

“Let Go of The Dead Or Serve Them As If They Were Alive?” A Preliminary Study on A Less Well Known Burial Custom Yuyang Wang

VOLUME 8 | 12

Southeast Asia 56

Reverberations of American Intervention: Remnants of the Second Indochina Conflict Luke Kertcher

64

Economic Implications of the Vietnam War for East Asia

68

Avoiding Loss through Curation: An Examination of the Trajectory of Sinitic Languages in Singapore

Shawn Xu

Ben Roth

Book Review 75

Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839-1937 by Scott S. Reese Ida Sofie Nitter

Foreign Language 78

James McPhail

13 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

North Korea’s Foreign Policies

Major Foreign Impact on North Korea’s Foreign Policies: Origin of Division, Major Policy Evolution, and the Future Yuzhou Li

Yuzhou Li is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, who is majoring in Political Science and International Relations and minoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. One of her academic interests is the international security in the Pan-Pacific area, especially between the U.S. and East Asia.

North Korea is now under the global spotlight due to its imposed nuclear threat to international security. To generate feasible solutions to this threat, scrutiny of North Korea’s foreign policy during the origin of division and post-war policy evolution is necessary. This essay examines and proves the decisive role of foreign influences in the Korean War conflict, North Korea’s post-war policy evolution, and potential developments of the North Korea crisis. Rather than being affected by its domestic politics, North Korea’s foreign policy has been influenced primarily by other major players in the region such as China, South Korea, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Based on this analysis, the future of the North Korean crisis is not bright, because it is unlikely North Korea will disarm voluntarily, but the crisis may end by a regime change, as a last resort.

The first part of this analysis is about the origins of the Korean division. Looking back into the modern history of Korea, this region was ruled by the Joseon Dynasty from the late fourteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. However, after several centuries of unification, the Korean Peninsula was invaded

by Japan in the beginning of the twentieth century. “Japan made Korea its protectorate in 1905 and annexed it in 1910.” The Japanese colonization of Korea was not over until August 15, 1945, when Japan was defeated by the U.S. at the end of World War II. After World War II, different regimes rose to power due to the lack of a central governmental order. Later, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two areas: a northern part ruled by a communist regime under the leadership of Kim Il-Sung, and a southern part ruled by a democratic president, Rhee Syng-man. Eventually, a civil war was triggered by Kim’s invasion into South Korea, and in a few months, this war escalated to an international conflict known as the Korean War, which ended with a

truce treaty that resulted in a division of the peninsula until modern times.

The division of the Korean Peninsula had both internal and external causes, but this outcome was primarily determined by the external forces. There are three main internal factors that contributed to the division. First, the northern and southern parts of Korea have historically held unfriendly attitudes toward each other. The southern part was always the more developed region under the Joseon dynasty, because the South had the political center, Seoul, and the geographic trading advantage of being closer to China and Japan. By contrast, the North was discriminated against; its population was viewed to be vulgar, and its local elites were blocked by the southern elites from achieving high status in the central government. Therefore, resentful attitudes between the two regions historically existed.

Second, these two regions have geographic distinctions that led to adopting different ideologies. Compared to the southern part, the northern part was exposed to communism from the Soviets, so it was more likely to have a communist regime rise in the area. On the other hand, under Japanese invasion, southern citizens in urban areas were actively fighting for freedom, especially after Wilson’s famous call for national self-determination. Hence, the South typically leaned more towards a democracy. Third, during the early stage of division, both regimes had ambition to reunify the peninsula, which led to military clashes. In the North, Kim Il-sung believed that his communist government was the only legitimate regime in the peninsula. For example, he was inaugurated in Pyongyang, but his government declared the real capital to be Seoul. Meanwhile, people in South Korea, especially conservatives, often aimed to eliminate communists in their reunification efforts. Thus, an internal conflict was ultimately triggered VOLUME 8 | 14

Li by these three factors, no matter which side first started the conflict.

Even though these internal causes contributed to the conflict, external forces were the main reasons for this lasting division. To begin, it was because of the military interventions of China and the United Nations that this civil war escalated to an international war without a winner. The conflict originally was a civil war, and one side would have eventually defeated the other side if left alone; this likely would have happened when the North almost defeated the South before the U.N.’s intervention. Nonetheless, because of the Cold War, the West would not give up any opportunity to protect territories from communism. Therefore, U.N. troops entered the war to help South Korea balance the North, but this action raised China’s security concerns, leading to Chinese military participation in the war. It was because of the entrance of the U.N. and Chinese troops that the original prediction of a definite winner of this civil war was wrong, as neither side had the ability to defeat the other, resulting in a truce treaty that made the division last until modernity.

The second part of this analysis is about North Korea’s post-war foreign policies. In North Korea’s post-war foreign policy evolution, it was also evident that North Korea’s strategies toward the outside world evolved according to the influences of major foreign powers. After the Korean War, North Korea started applying its grand strategy, Juche ideology; Juche means “self-body” in Korean. By implementing Juche ideology, North Korea expected to achieve self-independence in economics and politics. Aiming toward a self-sufficient economy, in 1956 the North Korean government initiated the Chollima Movement (“a horse runs thousands of miles” movement), developing heavy industry and collective farming in the country. The North Korean regime persisted in this movement for decades and neglected international trades. As Eberstadt describes, “North Korea’s economy has been and continues [to be] …sheltered from interaction with the world markets.”

Politically based on the idea of self-independence, or in this case, closed-ness, the North Korean regime cut off major communicating channels to not let its citizens receive outside information. In addition, after decades of economic stagnation, the North Korean regime started building Kim Il-Sung’s personal cult to stabilize polit15 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

ical control. Although this closed-ness strategy seemed to mainly be under domestic control, its economic and political features were heavily influenced by the foreign powers of China, the Soviet Union, and South Korea.

For example, the major economic Chollima Movement and the build-up of Kim Il-Sung’s personal cult were methods copied from the Chinese. In “Great Leap Forward”, Mao Zedong rallied around the country to encourage hard work so that China’s economy could catch up with that of Britain and America in a few years. Similarly, in Chollima Movement, Kim Il-Sung mobilized the entire country to a collective effort to move North Korea’s economy as fast as possible. Chollima Movement also copied the idea of collective farming from “Great Leap Forward”. Like the people’s communes in “Great Leap Forward”, Chollima Movement grouped every three hundred households into huge farms, and the each farm had a certain agricultural quota. In addition, after “Great Leap Forward” failed, the Chinese regime used propaganda to build up Mao’s personality cult to reduce economic grievance, which was the same method applied by North Korea after Chollima’s failure, transferring the focus from economy to totalitarian worship.

Additionally, the main feature of the Juche ideology, self-independence, was partially inspired by the complications between China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. In the 1950s and 1960s, China and the Soviet Union gradually turned from allies to enemies due to issues and events like the Sino-Indian War, the U.S.S.R. leadership transition from Stalin to Khrushchev, and the Soviet Union’s reaction to the Taiwan Strait Crisis. Under this tension between the two biggest communist regimes (that were unfortunately also North Korea’s bordering neighbors), it was natural for North Korea to choose not to be involved. Additionally, North Korea’s relations with both China and the Soviet Union were satisfying neither country. China had been reluctant to give foreign aid to North Korea, and the Soviet Union did not help much in the Korean War when North Korea’s national security was at stake.

Therefore, in addition to the unwillingness to cooperate with Western countries, North Korea also did not want to rely on its communist comrades anymore and generated the Juche Ideology. Third, the isolation perpetuated by Juche Ideology was created to deliberately keep

North Korea’s Foreign Policies North Koreans in ignorance, primarily because their enemy, South Korea, was undergoing significant economic takeoff. Once the citizens opened to the outside world, the Kim family would likely to lose its political control. Therefore, due to South Korea’s great economic performance, North Korea instead tightened more of its political grip.

As for North Korea’s post-war military policies, North Korea’s determination to develop nuclear weapons, even under sanctions, was also a decision driven by foreign powers. Starting from the 1990s, North Korea began its research on nuclear weapons to ensure national security. Although the research was once slowed by the Six-Party Talk, North Korea eventually succeeded in owning nuclear weapons in 2006. There were two main reasons why North Korea began to feel insecure in the 1990s and continued developing nuclear weapons, and both were external.

First, after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., the West, led by the U.S., started military operations in small and non-democratic countries like Iraq, Somalia, and Yugoslavia. As a small communist regime, North Korea spontaneously felt insecurity. Second, right on North Korea’s border, South Korea grew stronger with an economy that developed exponentially and with tremendous U.S. military support, while North Korea stalled. For decades, as Kang pointed out, South Korea’s economy was driven by “export-oriented industrialization.” Signed in 1965, the Korean-Japanese Normalization Treaty let Japan become South Korea’s second-biggest buyer and produced significant benefits for South Korea. In addition, after collaboration in the Vietnam War, the U.S. delivered more economic benefits and a firmer military alliance with South Korea. According to Katz and Cha, “South Korea has maintained its status, in the eyes of the US, as the ‘linchpin’ for regional security.” On the other hand, however, North Korea’s economy stalled since the 1970s. After the Korean War, “North Korea’s level or urbanization appears to have been higher than South Korea’s… but North Korea seems to have been surpassed by South Korea in the 1970s.” From 1971 to 1984, North Korea’s economy grew by under two percent each year, while South Korea’s economy at that time grew by more than ten percent each year. Moreover, internal problems like aging infrastructure, a tremendous amount of foreign

debt, and an energy crisis appeared. The Kim family were faced with threats from potential Western intervention and a growing South Korea that constantly had the ambition of reunification. To secure totalitarian rule, nuclear deterrence became the best option for the Kim family.

The third part of this paper is an analysis of the future developments of the North Korean crisis. Based on the conclusions in the previous two parts, it is certain that the U.S. and other major East Asian powers, especially China and South Korea, will play key roles.

To begin, the core of North Korea’s threat to external forces is its nuclear weapons, and to North Korea, the core of the outside threat is its totalitarian regime’s insecurity. Therefore, two solutions may work under these conditions. The first solution is to peacefully disarm North Korea’s nuclear weapons by assuring the Kim family that their rule will never be challenged with the absence of nuclear weapons. It is crucial to have a consensus among the six parties from the Six-Party Talk that getting rid of nuclear weapons shall never disadvantage North Korea’s international security. The U.S. should make major efforts to negotiate with North Korea and give credible promises. The Trump administration should use more moderate rhetoric to push peace talks forward. Meanwhile, South Korea should resume Sunshine Policy to accelerate the breaking of ice.

However, the likelihood of achieving the suggestion above is low, given the current tension and mistrust between North Korea and the U.S. If a peaceful solution is too ideal, more extreme solutions may be put on the table, and North Korea may be faced with a severely dangerous regime change. Even though promoting a regime change is risky and extreme, it is the most practical among other options and can serve as the last resort. If the current North Korean regime can be overthrown, it would be the best to let South Korea take control over the entire peninsula, getting rid of the risk of having a more belligerent successor.

The practicality of this extreme solution is reasonably high under the current conditions because North Korea poses a threat that is great enough for China to lean more towards South Korea and the United States. Right now, North Korea’s nuclear weapons threaten China and South Korea the most. Because North Korea’s nuclear sites are right next to the ChiVOLUME 8 | 16

Li nese border, China feels an unprecedented threat. It is certain that China’s northeastern provinces will face a massive flow of refugees if any kind of nuclear leaks or explosions take place. Moreover, China’s northeastern provinces are close enough to the nuclear sites to be affected by deadly contamination. This year, China and Russia held joint Anti-Missile training, which directly showed China’s high level of alertness.

Even though China would likely be on the U.S.’s side, the U.S. still needs to build more trust with China for the regime change to succeed. After all, the existence of North Korea as an “important buffer zone between the Chinese and US spheres of influence” still means a lot to China. Thus, some level of security promise should be made between China and the U.S., such as not letting American troops cross over the Demilitarized Zone. In fact, China and the U.S. seem to be moving in this direction already, as “the secretary Tillerson said the United States had assured China that if American troops had to enter North Korea in event of a conflict, they would ‘retreat’ to South Korea afterward.”

To conclude, throughout North Korea’s contemporary history, its foreign policy has been constantly shaped by other major players on the global scale, rather than by its domestic politics. Analysis of topics like the outcome of the Korean War, the evolution of Juche ideology, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons demonstrate the heavy foreign impact on North Korea’s strategies toward the outside world. Moreover, in the future, potential key movements in the North Korea issue profoundly depend on China’s attitude. From the analysis, the likelihood of China cooperating with the U.S. directly determines the practicality of a regime change. Right now, the world’s view on North Korea is limited to the presence of a dictatorship. The masses believe that the Kim family can change North Korea’s policy any way they want, but this analysis of North Korea’s foreign policies definitely supports a different belief. North Korea’s foreign policies are not unilateral decisions, but collective outcomes shaped by major powers’ actions. Hopefully, this analysis can add more dimensions to the North Korea debate, possibly providing inspirations for a better solution.

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(Endnotes) 1. Min, Pyong Gap, “Korean ‘Comfort Women’: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class.”

Gender and Society 17, no. 6 (December 2003): 943.

2. Ibid., 943.

3. Park, Eugene Y. “Introduction to Korean Civilization.” Lecture, EALC 003 Class from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, December 4, 2017.

4. Devine, Richard. “Japanese Rule in Korea after the March First Uprising: Governor General Hasegawa’s Recommendations.” Monumenta Nipponica 52, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 523.

5. Eberstadt, Nicholas. “Disparities in Socioeconomic Development in Divided Korea: Indications and Implications.” Asian Survey 40, no. 6 (November– December 2000): 890 6. Kang, David C. “Bad Loans to Good Friends: Money Politics and the Developmental State in Korea.”

International Organization 56, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 177 7. Katz, Katrin, and Victor Cha. “South Korea in 2011: Holding Ground as the Region’s Linchpin.” Asian Survey 52, no. 1 (January/February 2012): 53 8. Eberstadt, Nicholas. “Disparities in Socioeconomic Development in Divided Korea: Indications and Implications”: 876 9. Bennett, Bruce W., and Jennifer Lind. “The Collapse of North Korea: Military Missions and Requirements.” International Security 36, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 85.

10. Sharkov, Damien. “North Korea’s Neighbors Russia and China Have Held Anti-MissileTraining.”

Newsweek, Newsweek, 17 Dec. 2017, www.newsweek.com/russia-and-china join-forces-antimissile-defense-drill-beijing-750711.

11. Bennett, Bruce W., and Jennifer Lind. “The Collapse of North Korea: Military Missions and Requirements.” :114 12. Perlez, Jane. “South Korea’s Leader, Meeting Xi Jinping, Seeks ‘New Start’ With China.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/world/asia/chinasouth-korea-xi-jinping.html?_r=0.

Japanese Colonization of Korea

Examining Japanese colonization of Korea through Realism and Constructivism: Studying Imperialism in the Context of East-West Dichotomy, and Relation between Middle and Great Powers in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Elaine Lee

Elaine Lee is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, who is majoring in International Relations and minoring in Philosophy and East Asian Area Studies. Her academic interests are East Asian geopolitics, international security, sovereignty, and democratization. She is currently planning a senior thesis on asymmetric warfare and usage of cyberspace as a weapon of the weak. Lee was also a Kim Program Undergraduate Fellow for the 20162017 year, where she focused her political science and history coursework and academic specializations on colonization and Korean sovereignty.

Introduction

Western imperialism – and where Japan fits

Why use international relations theory to study a historical era? Some would argue theories like realism and constructivism are too limiting and that different ideas should be combined to develop a unique explanation for each situation, rather than a specific set per theory. However, even if each historical event is unique in its own situational and cultural context, theories still serve the purpose of explaining and rationalizing general actions, rather than explaining every country’s specific decisions. These rationalizations explain patterns in international relations, whether it be on how middle powers react to territorial expansion of bigger powers, or how a government’s control over state power affects its ability to mobilize a high-functioning military. Theories simplify complex information about the world to help us understand the function of the international system.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution empowered Western countries to travel longer distances and slowly begin the process of globalization, countries’ foreign policies were increasingly influenced by their external atmosphere, rather than on internal domestic values or priorities. Especially given cultural differences between Japan and Western countries, international relations theory helps to explain Japan’s reaction to Western imperialism as reflected in its ambitions towards colonizing Korea.

The late nineteenth century can be characterized as an “Age of Empires,” as Western European powers initiated mass expansion of territorial empires, driven largely by economic incentives, but also justified on the basis of ‘advancing’ other civilizations. New technologies in the region enabled more efficient transportation, manufacturing, and communication, and inspired the governments of Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, and many other European countries to exploit resources in other countries, globalize the world, and strengthen their domestic economies. It was at this time in history that national power came to be equated with national wealth.

For example, the power of England and its famed navy had been driven by industrial success, largely due to commercial trade. Domination of commerce of the world allowed England to exercise her influence among all the nations of the world and “make her political and military force felt” (Angell, 1913).

Expanded territory was a natural avenue for economic opportunity, especially justified under the idealistic vision of “civilizing” developing nations, a phenomenon often referred to as the White Man’s Burden. Incorporating other territories into an empire, with a remote source of control, imperial nations could build a reputation as a unified state capable of guaranteeing opportunities for citizens of weak nations that their own government could not provide (Angell, 1913). To subVOLUME 8 | 18

Lee jugate another country, imperial nations needed strong militaries either to use force and coercion into an imperial relationship, or as a form of deterrence to persuade a subservient relationship. Therefore, the Age of Empires was a period of mass territorial accumulation by a handful of Western European powers that had access to increased labor, resources that could not be found in their local home base, and valuable waterways to facilitate transportation. It was also a period of increased military capability, technological development, and social urgency to spread liberal democratic principles to “uncivilized” areas. John Whitney Hall wrote in 1968 of a “sleeping beauty interpretation” of the incorporation of Asia into this age – depicting an image of Western powers “prodding a slumbering people to awaken to the challenges of the modern world” (Pyle, 2006).

What is particularly unique about Imperial Japan was its decision to colonize its neighbor, Korea, and engage in fierce assimilation on a level much more invasive than that of Western empires. For example, while the British Empire colonized the Congo, it did not require Congolese to dress in Victorian fashion or adopt various aspects of British culture — economic exploitation was the purpose of contact — whereas the Japanese enacted various forms of invasive assimilation, from banning the Korean language to forcing name changes to Japanese styles. The imperial relationship between Korea and Japan, two states with a history of cultural rivalry, is much more complicated than one based off economic greed and merits analysis in the framework of international relations theory.

One of the biggest signs of Japanese progress towards regional hegemony was victory in the Sino-Japanese War, from 1894 – 1895, and in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The former was consequential in disrupting the Sino-centric regional order and solidifying China’s imperial system. The latter not only “threw Russia into a chain of dramatic internal shifts” that provided an additional power vacuum for Japan to assume, but also contributed to the “fall of Korea into Japanese protectorate in 1905 and into a colony in 1910” (Agov, 2005).

In this paper, I will discuss two theoretical perspectives of international relations, realism and constructivism, and how they explain motivations for and implementation of Japanese colonization of Korea.

Realism interprets this colonial relationship as Japan’s 19 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

attempt to balance power in response to Western imperialism. Constructivism interprets the matter as a manifestation of the social construct of identity and abiding by norms of strong powers aiding weak powers. Given the complexity of economic, geopolitical, strategic, as well as cultural and social factors that explain Japanese colonization of Korea, I combine the two theories rather than artificially try to assert one over the other and argue that Japan acted out of realist concerns to ultimately achieve a constructivist objective of building an imperial identity.

Realist school of thought Realist theory rests on the assumption that analysis of international relations is divided into the individual, state, and international system. The individual level analyzes the role of human psychology and leaders’ personalities and choices. The state level considers governments, national interest, and domestic interest groups in shaping foreign affairs. The international system consists of international norms and rules, and realism ultimately accepts states as the primary actors in the international system. Differentiating between these levels of analysis is helpful to understand realism’s emphasis on state-to-state interaction as an entity with clear territorial boundaries and functions to protect the security of its citizens.

A hallmark of realist theory is the concept of international anarchy: without an international government to enforce rules, states must ensure their own security because of the large element of uncertainty about other states’ intentions, even among allies. When each state views itself as vulnerable and alone, it is motivated to provide for its survival at all times. While some states may have ambitions to maintain the status quo, others may want to influence another’s policy or conquer territory, and in an anarchic system, conflict and war are always possible. With war as the key mode of conflict resolution, cooperation between nations and alliances in general become problematic when they end up entangling more actors in a conflict than initially intended. Powerful nations are those that possess offensive military capability, or the means to hurt and possible destroy other states, and territorial integrity and political autonomy are two primary ways to ensure

Japanese Colonization of Korea security (Mearsheimer, 2001). In the context of imperialism, realism explains state behavior as expanding the share of world power to alter the balance of power by acquiring additional increments of power at the expense of potential rivals (Mearsheimer, 2001). States look for opportunities to maximize their power by using other states because of the absence of an international regulatory agency that enforces the status quo.

Material power is a defining feature of realism because a strong military and economy are required to project a country’s ability to harm others and protect its resources. Mearsheimer explains this, as he defines “power largely in military terms because offensive realism emphasizes that force is the ultima ratio of international politics” (Mearsheimer, 2001). Material power also includes land power, as militaries traditionally define their victories on the ability to conquer and control land, assuming conventional warfare, and land is the “supreme political objective in a world of territorial states” (Baldwin, 2013).

Concern with a balance of power is the outcome of anarchy in the international system and fixation with building material power to ensure national security. Balancing of power is most relevant to the age of imperialism in that when “great powers” or the states with the most military power control the game of international politics, middle powers feel most pressured to balance power against them. The Western empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reaped the benefits of huge asymmetries of power, and Japanese imperial ambitions can be explained by realism as a concern about Japan needing its own self-sufficient empire to get resources to defend itself (Snyder, 2003). When comparing power among different states, a distinction between absolute and relative power is important, because while absolute power refers to ultimate dominance in one area, relative power is when states assess their status compared to others and are motivated to gain in relation to competitors. The competition induced by the atmosphere of anarchy leads states to pursue relative power, or gains in material power enough to overpower a rival.

Japanese colonization explained by realism Balance of power, preventing future acquisition of Korea, and the influence of Western hegemons are

specific applications of realism to the Japanese colonization of Korea. Self-interested countries in the anarchic international world order bolster their own power by increasing manpower, economic resources, and ability to sustain a military. For Japan, a colonial Korea projected a future of a bigger military and an opportunity to prevent other countries from seizing the territory.

As nineteenth-century German-American economist Friedrich List stated, territorial acquisition came to be seen as a means of protecting “markets and sources of raw materials from possible retaliation by foreign competitors”(Caprio, 2014). In addition to the added effect of strengthening global status through expansion, realism interprets Japan’s role in this anarchic world as one that was threatened by foreign imperialism and aimed to defend itself to “avoid the visible fate of a weakening China” (Mann, 2012).

Balance of power The most prominent application of realism to Japanese colonization in Korea is the balance of power phenomenon, in which states respond to greater powers by building up their own forces and security. Especially given that forces of imperialism in this age were originating from the Western Hemisphere, Japan initiating its own empire from the Eastern Hemisphere can be understood as trying to even out an asymmetrical source of Western power; “Japan could remain aloof from the Sinocentric system, but not the new order imposed by Western imperialism” (Pyle, 2006). Especially since the unequal treaties, Japanese leadership was “keenly attuned” to the distribution of power, relative standing of different actors in the system, and hierarchy of prestige” (Pyle, 2006). Adapting to a new configuration of power, Japan found motivation to enlarge its empire in its disadvantage in military and industrial power relative to other Western countries, demonstrating balance of power motivated by a need to increase relative power. The insecurity of the international system leads states to “heed the cues of the international system” (Pyle, 2006), for fear of losing independence.

Preventing future acquisition of Korea Asserting control over the Korean Peninsula beVOLUME 8 | 20

Lee fore any other country attempted to do so is not only an example of balance of power, but also demonstrative of the realist argument that in an uncertain international system, there is no way to predict future encroachment of another power into East Asia. Viewing Korea in the traditional light of being geopolitically placed with a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan,” Japan came generally to feel that Korea must be within its control in case another power used the peninsula as a base for eventual operations against the homeland (Brudnoy, 1970). Also, as Ito Hirobumi, a former Japanese prime minister, argued, consolidating Japan’s influence over Korea was more important to free it from other countries’ intervention, as opposed to progressing in the agenda to annex Korea (Kim, 2008).

Influence of Western hegemons Realism’s focus on the international system warrants more study of Japan’s actual interaction with the great powers of the Age of Empires. In 1905, Japanese Prime Minister Katsura Taro engaged the United States Secretary of War in a confidential conversation on maintenance of “general peace in the Far East,” on the basis of “good understanding between the three governments of Japan, the United States and Great Britain” (Larsen, 2014). The initiative to include the very powers that threatened Japanese security reflects Japan’s understanding of how balance of power works. When states build up their security in response to a perceived threat, this can trigger further buildup of security by the other side, leading to a security dilemma. So, by including the US and Britain in its plans to build hegemony in East Asia, Japan placed itself in a position of equals, almost receiving permission to adopt an empire with similar institutions as the West. This helped maintain a friendly sense of openness and collaboration rather than threat and uncertainty in the international system.

In this way, Japan regained independence and respect without triggering in the Western powers a need to limit the extent of Japanese control over other territories.

In fact, by establishing a rapport of open dialogue with the US in particular, Japan could secure positive endorsement for its own empire within the rhetoric of “restoring a balance of power in the Far East” (Kim, 1995) and finding points of mutual benefit. Perceiving 21 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

a Russian threat, the US advocated Japanese expansion to check Russian dominance in Manchuria. Furthermore, President Roosevelt not only endorsed Japan as a growing “great naval power in the Pacific [whose] fleet already surpassed American naval power in strength” (Kim, 1995), but also spoke to Korea’s “utter inability to stand by itself” to justify why “Japan ought to have a protectorate over Korea.”

If Japan had not engaged with the hegemons about its desire to contribute to the future of East Asia, realism would predict that the Western powers would instead balance against Japan the way they did with Russia and China. They would either have endorsed a different country or carved up Asian territories for their respective empires the way the Western powers gave Japan permission to balance against Russia’s ambitions in Manchuria. The powers could have used direct or indirect means of force to coerce Japan into a position of subjugation the way Britain coerced China through forced unequal treaties and the illegal sale of opium, which poisoned the Chinese population and prevented any sort of sustainable social, technological, or economic progress. As David Brudnoy writes in “Japan’s experiment in Korea,” without Western compliance, Japan might have been obliged to endure another humiliation such as the Triple Intervention of Western interference with East Asian regional international relations conflicts. The effect of balancing power in East Asia, taking advantage of the strategically critical location of the Korean Peninsula, and the support that Japan received from other foreign powers for its actions in Korea (Caprio, 2014) specifically demonstrate how realism explains Japanese colonization of Korea.

Constructivist school of thought Constructivism also acknowledges the international level of analysis that realism depends on, but instead of arguing that states are the primary actors in foreign affairs, constructivism asserts that the international system is socially constructed; just as individuals interact to create a society and culture, states also develop shared practices and develop identities. For example, sovereignty is a social construct, as nations are just connected pieces of land that have distinct boundaries and are universally acknowledged and respected. The

Japanese Colonization of Korea White Man’s Burden concept was a norm in the Age of Empires, the norm among powerful states that once “civilized,” the successes of such democratic-style and Christian-influenced institutions had to be replicated across the world for the sake of human progress. While state behavior can still be explained by economic or military ambitions, constructivism draws a long-term picture and attributes state behavior to norms.

A norm is a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a particular identity (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). Norms can range from prohibition of slavery to respect for state boundaries, and they change over time – these changes are what influence changes in state behavior. While realism interprets the anarchic international system as a self-help system, constructivism theorizes that anarchy depends on state behavior and social interactions, and does not necessarily lead to direct power balancing (Wendt, 1992). Realists generalize state behavior into power maximization, but constructivists call for a more intellectual, societal framework that assesses different state identities and how this influences behavior.

Norms change when people shift their priorities for certain values, whether it be natural resource management, enfranchisement, or banning landmines in the latter half of the twentieth century. Constructivism explains change in the international system with a phenomenon called “norm emergence,” when a norm entrepreneur, usually a “great power” that has the luxury and influence of disrupting the status quo, pursues a new norm leading to gradual change. New norms require legitimacy, and more importantly, institutionalization, to formally publicize a widespread acceptance of the change. Norms are most powerful in a group setting, meaning that one individual adopting a new pattern of behavior does little to demonstrate credibility, since “legitimation lies in the hands of others” (Finnemore, 2009). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the emergence of “modernity” became associated with Westernization, prompting a norm of republic-style government, technological advancement, and higher quality of life. Japan’s approach to colonizing Korea was heavily influenced by this norm as government officials prioritized revising Japan’s image in the international system.

Japanese colonization explained by constructivism In the case of Japan and its colonization of Korea, the rhetoric of embarking on a civilizing mission, adaptation to the trend of formalizing nation-state relations, internalization of Western institutions, and formulation and projection of a new Japanese identity demonstrate ways in which constructivist theory applies nuance to Japanese colonization of Korea apart from increasing material power. Constructivism attributes change in international relations to a shift in norms, identities, or values that affect social behavior; patterns of behavior affect national attitudes, habits, and principles. The way a global norm is identified is in the definition of power.

If power is defined as the ability to control the behavior of others, in the Age of Empires the most powerful countries’ propagated way of life was the new norm because it pressured other states to follow suit. Given the dominance of the British navy and persistence of American diplomats in opening up East Asia, Western norms were global norms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, Kenneth Pyle writes of a tendency in Japanese history to regard adaptation to the trend of the ties as a great virtue (Pyle, 2006), showing the motivating effects of imitation, rather than greed for global power maximization.

Rhetoric of a civilizing mission One of the central features of the Age of Empires was the ideal of spreading advanced civilization and a higher standard of living to nations and peoples incapable of developing on their own. While the definition of “advanced civilization” is subjective depending on values and cultural background, in this paper, the term refers to a way of life that incorporates technology to improve the quality of life and encourages free will and individualism. For Western empires, the act of spreading civilization was somewhat of a racialized mission, as the “white race’s duty to the world” (Kim, 1995) to lift non-white societies out of their backwardness. Japan was essentially granted civilizing duties through Western support, particularly when President Roosevelt said that “While I am President, the Japanese will be treated just exactly like the English, Germans, French or other civilized peoples” (Kim, 1995). The VOLUME 8 | 22

Lee standard of civilization included “implied capacity for self-government, efficiency of organization, national unity, and military strength” (Kim, 1995).

To pursue a civilizing mission for the sake of Korea’s future, Japan had to reject what it identified as its own barbaric past to separate it from Korea and elevate itself to a position deserving to civilize another country. The German physician Erwin von Baelz wrote in his diary that the Japanese did not want to know anything about their past and declared that any civilized person could only be embarrassed by it (Baelz, 1932).

Describing a Japanese acquaintance as stating that Japan’s history was just beginning, and that the past of barbarism essentially cannot be viewed as history, von Baelz provides a primary source insight into the way Japanese people described their perception of national identity. Labeling its historical legacy as one of barbarism and rejecting it in favor of a new identity, Japan self-justified its own civilizing mission.

There are numerous examples of Japanese people placing imperialism under the umbrella of a civilizing mission. For example, Japanese journalist Takekoshi Yosaburo once wrote in his journal, “Sekai no Nihon,” that the Japanese wished to “take part in the work of colonizing the yet-unopened portions of the globe” and extend “the inhabitants the benefits of civilization”(Caprio, 2014). Establishing a Japanese protectorate over Korea was justified by the rhetoric of destroying Korean barbarism, reforming the chaotic administration, and strengthening Korean independence.

The civilizing mission towards Korea was amplified by phrases such as “sweep away evils rooted in the Korean imperial family,” “government rotten with corruption to its very core,” and “a people reduced by ages of oppression and spoliation to the lowest abyss of unrelieved misery and hopeless poverty” (Brudnoy, 1970).

Additionally, a comment in the Japanese popular magazine “Korea and Manchuria” refers to a Japanese noble responsibility toward humankind, reflecting the civilizing duties of lifting oppressed people out of a barbaric way of life and into a new, reformed system. The trend of civilizing primitive societies, reflected in Japan’s treatment of Korea, was explained “simply” due to the fact that the Japanese had the “good fortune to be introduced to ‘enlightened education’ four decades earlier than the Korean people” (Caprio, 2014).

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Trend of formal nation-state relations Another trend of this time period was the formalization of nation-states, and the shift from isolationist territories to globalized, open nations. Takekoshi Yosaburo, founder of the journal “Sekai no Nihon” and a Seiyukai political party member, wrote in 1881 that “the idea of a Japanese nation did not exist” and that “it only came to be realized that they were one people” (Caprio, 2014). By this he meant that despite imperial Japan’s assertion of always having been a nation, Takekoshi recognized “the freshness of his country’s perception of nationhood” (Caprio, 2014). After the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, which opened Japan to US trade, it was more important for Japan to be able to project power and avoid further encroachment by strong, unified Western powers. While formalizing nation-state relations in response to unequal treaties appears more of a realist reaction like balancing power, it belongs in a constructivist framework of thinking because distinct nation-states defined explicitly through formal law was a global trend, not just a short-term consequence of power maximization by self-interested states.

There was a historically unprecedented need to formulate and formalize international agreements into law, to regulate standards by which nations across the world would interact with increasing frequency, and to recognize unities of people known as nations - essentially, the rise of what is now commonly known as international relations. However, international agreements created by Western hegemons had their own conditions and pre-existing assumptions. Auerback elaborates on this by writing that despite the “universalist claims” of international law, “only governments that successfully subscribed to nation-state theories could participate” (Auerback, 2006). Following initial contact, and then continued relations with the Western powers, Japan assimilated to the norm of establishing legal relations and being receptive to international law that was understandable to parties outside the Asian region. In other words, Japan had to replace the previous Sinocentric legal order with a new conversation of international terms (Auerback, 2006). Japanese colonial law came to reflect acceptance of Western institutions and behavior, and it proved to the rest of the international community that Japan was taking part in the trend of formalizing

Japanese Colonization of Korea nation-state relations through law. For example, Ume Kenjiro, a drafter of the Meiji Civil Code, used law to spread enlightened principles of private property and equal rights in Korea (Kim, 2008) for purposes of legal assimilation. Japanese colonial law also reflected internalization of Western values through institutional reform and imitation.

The wording of the Japan-Korean Protocol, signed in February 23, 1904, additionally reflects Japanese formalization of its relationship with Korea. Using words like “solid friendship,” and “firmly establishing peace,” the Imperial Government declared its noble intent to improve the Korean administration for the sake of guaranteeing “independence and territorial integrity of the Korean Empire”(McKenzie, 2010). While this was not the first time that Japan had published a formal treaty with a colonial subject, as relations with Taiwan and other neighboring territories had been established before colonization of Korea, the Protocol still demonstrated the continuance by the Japanese government of using the rhetoric of a civilizing mission and formalizing it in law. Explicit acknowledgment of territorial integrity as a value and standard for other countries shows the Japanese government’s acceptance and propagation of nation-state relations.

Internalization of Western institutions In the face of stark East-West cultural differences, Japan was able to put its cultural pride to the side in order to acclimate to a new configuration of power in the world. Western power dominated the Age of Empires, not only in terms of tangible material power through size of military or control over waterways, but also in terms of soft power through Western institutions becoming the new standard of “modernity” and “civilization.” Given that numerous aspects of East Asian culture originate in a Confucian tradition of conservatism, minimalism, and relative insular focus compared to Western values of expanded cooperation, openness, and outspoken liberalness, Japan accepted the liberal principles of the West despite the fact that they had no basis in the Japanese experience. One stark example of Japan internalizing Westernization was adopting English as a diplomatic standard; “Japanese diplomats naturalized international terms and associated techniques”(Auer-

back, 2006), and used English to make this change and adoption clear to the rest of the international community.

Another example of this is when Ono Azusa, a Japanese political leader, translated R. de Tracy’s English version of J.E. Goudsmit’s Treatise on Roman Law and Its Connection with Modern Legislation into Japanese in 1876 (Sandra, 1970). Using his past educational experiences in France and Britain to edit the new civil code in Japan, he also proposed reorganizing the cabinet system on a European model, so that the prime minister gained control over the entire ministry by filling the cabinet with members of their own party. This pragmatic adaptability is also reflected in Hara Kei, who, upon his appointment as prime minister of Japan, said it was inevitable that Japan internalized the new world trends represented by Wilsonianism (Pyle, 2006). The reason implementing Western institutions is more a signal of Japan adapting to global trends, rather than creating a superficial front to balance power against Western hegemons, is that change came from within, decades before colonization of Korea, and the rhetoric used in establishing internal reform reflects the same Western values for empowering other nations and modernizing government bureaucracy. However, the most powerful form of socially-constructed change in Japan that explains its colonization of Korea is the formulation and projection of a new Japanese identity.

Formulation and projection of a new Japanese identity Rejecting its ‘barbaric’ past and pushing for a re-branding of national integrity, Japan sought to redefine its position in the international system, not just as an imitator of Western success in terms of institutions, domestic law, and values, but as its own modern entity.

Andre Schmid writes that Japan’s quest for modernity was motivated beyond renegotiations of unequal treaties or wearing Western fashions, and more by the desire to recreate a new sense of national self to support Japanese discourse on Asia (Schmid, 2000). Japan’s identity as a self-proclaimed civilized leader of Asia was dependent on unifying the domestic front, not only among ethnic Japanese, but also among colonial subjects. For example, there were interdomain differences between people of different parts of the islands that ImVOLUME 8 | 24

Lee perial Japan controlled, and “the central administration was motivated to include all residents of the archipelago first as shinmin (subject) and later as kokumin (national subject)” (Caprio, 2014). This not only made it easier for the Japanese government to assume a more unified national identity, but also to gain its diverse constituency’s support through nationalism. The significance of a unified Japanese identity was showing the rest of the world the legitimacy of the Meiji regime and Japan’s advancement to civilization (Caprio, 2014). To have Japan thought of in a new, reformed, Westernized light conveys the extent to which constructivism explains change in international relations as a change in identity, social behavior, and norms.

Conclusion Japan’s role in the Age of Empires is remarkably complex to study, as Japan was the first Asian power to successfully embark on a grand imperial agenda like other Western imperial powers. With a unique history that was the legacy of its geography (Pyle, 2006), Japan was much different from its other powerful counterparts in the international system. While Britain, Belgium, and France all developed their colonial policies internally, driven by domestic politics, Japan’s colonial policy was influenced by the government’s perception of the external global atmosphere and subsequent revision of its internal institutions in imitation.

The extent to which realism or constructivism can explain Japanese colonization in Korea continues to be debated. International relations theory has never been a conclusive way to examine history, as there are different ways to quantify “evidence” for one side or the other, and new lines of thinking and rationalization are formed. Ultimately, a combination of the two theories best explain Imperial Japan’s motivations. If Japan was purely motivated by realist concerns of balance of power, it could have plainly balanced power, since it already had US support to restore a balance of power in Asia; this does not explain why Japan went to the lengths of reforming its internal institutions and adopted the Western standards of civilization for its entire empire in a realist frame of thinking. This is where the strength of the constructivist argument pulls more weight, as there is more reason to adopt new glob25 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

al norms, apart from just power projection. A further study of the relationship between power and discourse could yield a new theory that combines the applications of realism and constructivism to gain a more nuanced understanding of the grand strategy of Imperial Japan, particularly towards Korea. Perhaps it could be said that realist concerns prompted a Japanese empire in the first place, but constructivist ideas gave the empire its life, goals, and sustenance.

Ultimately, any analysis of the intersection of colonization and cultural rivalry is bound to consider the intellectual question of whether one civilized nation can gain moral or material advantage by the military conquest of another (Angell, 1913) and whether it is possible for a nation to ‘own’ the territory of another in the way that a person or corporation would ‘own’ an estate (Angell, 1913). Realism and constructivism provide contrasting explanations for how states behave the way they do – one concerning hard power, and the other soft power. In the end, however, any nuanced analysis of history should not be limited to one theory over the other, but rather combine numerous to create an individualized theory.

The value in continuing to research Japan’s imperial agenda in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not just in identifying patterns of behavior between a middle power and other big powers, but also in the context of differing cultural backgrounds. Moving forward, such a grand strategy could be used to predict future instances of middle powers like Brazil attempting to balance bigger powers like the US. While a more comprehensive analysis would compare specific aspects of Japanese colonization of Korea and then contrast them between realism and constructivism, this approach would work better in theory than in practice. Realistically, the factors that motivate realism are sometimes different from the factors that motivate constructivism, so it would be simplistic to limit this paper to three specific aspects of Japan’s agenda for Korea and analyze them equally with two theories. Any further development of this paper would benefit from numerous points for further research.

Further defining key words like “modern,” “military,” and “civilized” would help establish consistency in the examples used in the paper, as well as strengthen the application of theory to history. In addition, dedi-

Japanese Colonization of Korea cating more research to comparing public statements of Japanese government officials and contrasting them to what officials discuss in private could reveal more about what truly motivated certain policies and what was just used as rhetoric to rally people or gain support.

Also, examining the difference between national power and state power could add more nuance to the description and application of realism, which currently does not address the differences inside the state and treats it as a single entity. Finally, there is more to be said about domestic politics in Japan and whether a revitalization of Japanese institutions in Western styles was internally driven, as opposed to creating an empire just to balance other great powers or in response to a shift in norms of “advanced” versus “uncivilized” states. This is significant because it raises the larger question of why nations “modernize” and what it even means to become a modern nation. By examining distinctive institutions and values of Japanese society to determine more about whether Japan acclimated to the Age of Empires for internal or external reasons, we can improve scholarship on not only how middle powers react to global hegemons, but also how to gauge domestic and regional change as a function of state and individual interests, as opposed to the international system at large.

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Traditional Roots in Modern Korea

Tracing Traditional Roots in Modern Korea: A Comparison between “I Got a Boy” and Korean Traditional Vocal Music Sai-hyun Genie Kim

Sai-hyun Genie Kim is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is currently undeclared, but her academic interests are in communications, marketing, cultural studies, and music. Her research is in the field of ethnomusicology, and she plays the Korean traditional instrument, gayageum. Kim’s work has been influenced by her education from the Music Gifted Program at Gugak National High School and the Gayageum division and the Traditional Art Gifted Program at National High School of Traditional Korean Arts. She has also received the honor award for Research at Bugil High School in Cheonan, South Korea.

“Korean Wave” was initiated through the success of Korean dramas in East Asia. The success of What is Love All About?, which aired on CCTV in 1997 and had the second highest rankings in the history of Chinese television, marks the start of the Korean Wave (Shim 2006, 28). Stars In My Heart, a Korean drama series, became a big hit in China and Taiwan in 1999 (Sung 2010, 30). The 2004 drama Winter Sonata, greatly popular in Japan and China, solidified the position of K-dramas in East Asia (Jang and Paik 2012, 198).

The Korean drama Daejangeum aired from September 15, 2003, to March 23, 2004, earned great popularity in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Taiwan, while also attracting large audiences in Africa and South Asia (Jang and Paik 2012, 198).

Critics have attributed the success of Korean dramas in East Asia to cultural hybridity existent in Korean dramas. Kim Han-gil, the head of Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) noted in a 2001 interview that, “compared to Western drama’s sensationalism and violence, which doesn’t suit Chinese sensibilities, Korean dramas are drawing interest from Chinese people” (Cho 2012, 154). In other words, Korean popular culture has been able to fill the niche between Western culture and Asian societies. Scholars have specifically pointed out that Confucian notions featured in Korean dramas contributed to their success. Ryoo states that Korean TV dramas such as Winter Sonata, A Tale of Autumn, and Lovers in Paris portray filial piety and the tradition of respecting elders emphasized in Confucianism (Ryoo 2009, 145). Cultural contents in Korean dramas rendered these dramas more relatable to the

Asian audience and enabled them to earn great popularity in East Asia.

Although there have been attempts to analyze Confucian elements as factors in the success of K-dramas, little research has been conducted to examine the use of Korean traditional music techniques or characteristics in K-Pop. This paper shows that a popular K-Pop song, “I Got a Boy,” uses elements from two representative genres of Korean traditional vocal music: pansori and minyo. The paper will examine the different elements of pansori and minyo, including their narrative structure, chuimse (interjections by the drummer or the audience during a pansori performance), aniri (a narration of the plot in a pansori performance), the call-and-response structure, and jangdan (the underlying beats of Korean traditional music). Finally, an analysis of these elements in “I Got a Boy” will illustrate the similarities between this song and traditional Korean vocal music.

Description of Pansori

Pansori is a unique genre of Korean traditional vocal music that was developed in the late 17th century (Cultural Heritage Administration South Korea 2010, 148). A pansori scene by a famous pansori singer, Mo Heung Gap, is illustrated in a painting by an anonymous painter (see figure 2). In pansori performances, singers tell the audience a story by both singing and narrating the plot. Singers are always accompanied by drummers called the gosu who play the jangdan of the song. Pansori is considered to be one of the most inVOLUME 8 | 28

Kim teractive types of Korean traditional performance arts because the audience is allowed to shout out comments or freely express their feelings during the performance.

In 2003, UNESCO bestowed global recognition to pansori’s unique format and culturally symbolic characteristics by designating it as an Intangible Cultural Heritage (Oh et al. 2014, 689).

There are five musical compositions of pansori remaining in the current status quo, and each piece is about two to eight hours long. One of the most unique features of pansori is a technique called chuimse. Chuimse refers to interjections or words that the drummer or the audience shouts out in the middle of a performance to encourage the singer. These words or phrases do not follow a particular beat or a rhythm. For instance, in the middle of a performance, the drummer often shouts out encouraging statements such as “Hei! Jalhanda!”

(You’re doing great!), “Gurachi (Right!), or repeats certain phrases to emphasize the lyrics.

Korean traditional music, both instrumental and vocal, is composed of several sets of rhythmic patterns called jangdan. Jangdan is performed on a Korean traditional drum called jangu. There are many types of jangdan in Korean traditional music. The Huimori Jangdan is one of the fastest rhythmic patterns (presto) in Korean traditional music (Hwang 2006, 4). The Huimori Jangan is shown in figure 3. Because it is fast, the Huimori Jangdan is frequently used in vibrant and energetic music and therefore is suitable for various Korean Pop songs.

Figure 3. Basic Huimori Jangdan: Western Style notation and Korean Style notation

Pansori is both a type of vocal music and a type of literature, because the musical compositions are different stories. As a result, the compositions of pan29 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

sori are divided into different scenes, which are distinguished not only by the plot but also by the beats. Often, each scene is marked by a different jangdan with a distinct tempo. Moreover, because pansori is a form of literature, its compositions are not narrated in a single voice but by different characters. However, unlike musicals, the characters in pansori are not distinguished by the singers. The singers do not have a specific role and therefore, an individual singer may sing from the perspective of multiple characters, and multiple singers may play the role of a single character.

Aniri refers to sentences or phrases through which the singer narrates the plot of the story. Just like regular storytelling, aniri does not follow a particular rhythm or melody. Most pansori pieces start with an aniri that gives the audience background information and the setting of the story. When performers start from the middle of the piece, they often use aniri to summarize what has already happened in the story (Jang 2003, 207). Aniri also serves to create a more open environment in which the audience can easily communicate with the performer (Jang 2003, 239). Moreover, it relieves the tension of the piece and provides some time for the audience to rest (Jang 2003, 207).

Because Joseon dynasty was an agricultural society, many folk songs were developed to assist intense labor and facilitate cooperation among the farmers (Yang 2015, 78). Therefore, many examples of minyo, or Korean folk songs, employ a call-and-response structure in which the lead singer “calls” the other singers by singing his or her own independent verse, and the other singers “respond” by repeating a certain verse (Kang 2008, 58). The “calls” and “responses” are repeated throughout the song and form the call-and-response structure. An example of a song that employs this structure is “Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane,” a famous folk song from the Gyeongi Province in Korea.

As illustrated in figure 4, the lead singer sings his or her independent verses that are marked as phrases A, A*, A**, and A*** while the other singers respond to the

Traditional Roots in Modern Korea

Figure 4. Example of a folk song with call-and-response structure of “Choijinachingchingnane” Source: e-Gugak Academy. National Gugak Center.

N.d.Web. 2 October 2016. Musical Score. <http:// academy.gugak.go.kr/gugak/data/music_data. jsp?mode=view&article_no=18675&board_wrapper=%2Fgugak%2Fdata%2Fmusic_data.jsp&pager.offset=80&board_no=13&no=929>

The translated version of the song is given below. There are different interpretations of the meaning of the phrase “Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane.” Sukyu Ko and Youngjin Ko explain that people are expressing their patriotic fervor and mocking Japanese soldiers who are fleeing after their loss in the war between Korea and Japan in 1598 (Ko and Ko 1996, 165).

sistently producing successful groups for two decades (Ryoo 2009, 20). One of its greatest achievements is the creation of a popular girl group named Girls’ Generation.

Since their debut in 2007, Girls’ Generation, also known as SNSD, became one of the most adored girl groups in Korea as well as the mascot of Korean Popular music. The title song of their fourth album “I Got a Boy” was one of their most successful songs that garnered the group international recognition. This song won SNSD first place in numerous awards given by South Korean music programs such as the Music Bank Awards, MCountdown Awards, and the Music Triangle Awards (Russell 2014, 72-75). The music video of this song hit over 165 million YouTube views, and its popularity was recognized in 2013 when it won a YouTube Music Award.

In this section, “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation will be analyzed to determine the extent to which traditional music influences modern K-Pop. The analysis of the piece will be divided into six sections based on the aforementioned elements of Korean traditional vocal music. In the first section, the narrative structure of “I Got a Boy” will be analyzed to determine the structural similarities between this song and pansori music. The next two sections will demonstrate the employment of techniques used in Korean traditional vocal music, chuimse and aniri. Finally, the call-andresponse structure in “I Got a Boy” and the underlying rhythm, or the jangdan, of the piece will be analyzed.

Phrase A: Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane Phrase B: Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane Phrase A*: There are so many stars in the sky Phrase B: Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane Phrase A**: There is no hope in our hearts Phrase B: Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane Phrase A***: The sun that sets behind the west mountains The Narrative Structure of “I Got a Boy” Phrase B: Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation

K-Pop would not have been able to gain international acclaim without the development of large K-Pop entertainment companies that managed the production and the marketing process of K-Pop songs. One of the most influential and dominant entertainment companies in Korea is SM entertainment. Created in 1995 by Lee Soo-man, SM entertainment is known for its rigorous and long training process (Ryoo 2009, 20). SM entertainment has produced the first generation of famous pop stars and groups such as S.E.S, BoA, and H.O.T in the late 1990s. Since then, SM has succeeded in con-

Unlike instrumental music, vocal music directly portrays a certain situation, scene, or a theme through lyrics. Therefore, Korean Popular songs include a certain character and focuses on expressing emotions and thoughts of that particular character. For instance, most ballad songs often express the sorrow or grief a person feels when breaking up with a lover. Other cheerful songs often convey the happiness of falling in love or the joy of meeting one’s lover. Even if there are multiple singers who sing different parts, the song’s lyrics follow a coherent story and adhere to the theme or the overall emotion conveyed in the song.

However, instead of portraying a single characVOLUME 8 | 30

Kim ter in one particular situation, this four-minute song, “I Got a Boy”, is divided into different scenes that each portray multiple perspectives like pansori. Characters in this song are not differentiated by singers; multiple singers convey the thoughts and emotions of a single character, and a single singer plays the role of multiple characters. Like the scenes in pansori, different sections in “I Got a Boy” are also marked through differing rhythms and tempos.

The first scene, marked by a tempo of 98 bpm, portrays a situation in which a group of girls, a typical high school clique, gossips about a girl who recently changed her appearance. They envy her new style and speculate that she changed because of a popular boy she recently met.

Girls Clique: Oh my.

Character A: Look at her. What made her cut her hair?

Girls Clique: Oh my.

Character A: Look at her. From head to toe her style totally changed.

Why? I’m dying to know.

Why did she change? Go and ask her.

Character A: She thinks she is so great.

She brags all the time and tells me that I am too normal.

I guess she really likes that boy.

Girls Clique: No way! No Way!

The girl who changed her appearance, character B, enters the scene. The girls then ask the girl if she likes the boy and the lyrics focus on character B’s emotions and her crush on the boy.

Girls Clique: You became so sexy and pretty.

Is it because of that boy? I almost wanted to ask which cosmetics you’ve changed.

Character B: Actually, it is the first time I saw them: the deep eyes that looked like the eyes of a scarred beast.

Talking to him made me so dizzy.

Girls Clique: Good for you. Good for you.

stop. Let me put it down another way.” The tempo then changes to 140 bpm and the electronic background music becomes more prominent. The setting of the music video also visually changes from the city streets to a modern stage. In scene 2, the lyrics of the song convey the happiness and excitement one feels when falling in love. The solo parts sung by Taeyon and Sunny, along with the chorus parts sung by every other member of the group, depict the emotions of character B. Chorus in the perspective of the main character (character B): I got a boy, a cool one.

I got a boy, a nice one.

I got a boy handsome boy, who mesmerized me.

I got a boy, a cool one.

I got a boy, a nice one.

I got a boy awesome boy, I totally have a crush on him.

Character B: Ah, my prince. When will you come to rescue me?

Like a white dream, I bet you will come to hug me.

An advisor, character C, also appears to give advice to the main character.

Character B: Oh no! I’m having a mental breakdown.

He wants to see my face without makeup I really like him. Should I show it to him?

Character C: You really shouldn’t.

Girls Clique: Yup. Yup Character C: We should always keep what needs to be kept.

Girls Clique: Right. Right.

Character C: Don’t ever forget this until you are certain that he likes you.

The focus then returns to the main character, who describes the good qualities of the boy she likes.

After a narration of character B’s feelings, the song transitions to scene 3 that portrays another character who is frustrated with her boyfriend. The tempo changes to 98 bpm and the background music changes back to the one that was in Scene 1. In the music video, the lights on the stage go off, and only the solo singers

The song then shifts to scene 2 as one of the are presented on stage wearing the same dress and same singers, Tiffany, signals the transition by saying, “Ayo wig to emphasize the contrast with the previous scene 31 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Traditional Roots in Modern Korea in which all of the members appeared on a bright stage, wearing different clothes.

Character D: I’m so mad right now.

My boyfriend doesn’t consider me as a woman.

What should I do? Should I make him jealous?

I’m so upset. What should I do?

Girls Clique: No way! No Way!

(Aniri 1): Ayo GG! Yeah Yeah. Should we start? (bar 1-3) (Aniri 2): Ha ha ha. Let me introduce myself. Here comes trouble. (bar 11-13) (Aniri 3): Ayo stop. Let me put it down another way. (bar 35) (Aniri 4): Don’t stop. Let’s bring it back to 140. (bar 99)

Shortly after this scene in which the character The Call-and-Response Structure of “I Got a Boy” expresses her anger towards her boyfriend, the song transitions to the last scene and the tempo returns to The core structure of Korean folk songs, the 140 bpm. The lyrics of the second scene are repeated. call-and-response structure, is featured in “I Got a Boy.” The first call-and-response structure is shown in figure Chuimse 5 and figure 6. The phrases indicated as Call A and Call B are sung by the lead singer while phrases Response

There are several interjections in the middle of A and Response B are sung by the rest of the members the song that have a similar function to that of chui- as a follow-up of the call phrases. Phrases Call C and mse. In the first scene, when Character A talks about the Call D in figure 7 and figure 8 are also call phrases sung change in Character B’s style and appearance, the other by a single lead singer and are responded by the rest members add in chuimse. Also, in the second scene in of the members as shown in phrases Response C and which Character B appears, the rest of the members add Response D. interjections in order to encourage the lead singer and to emphasize the main lyrics. These interjections and words do not follow a certain beat or melody and therefore characteristic of chuimse.

(Chuimse 1) Girls Clique: Oh my.

Character A: Look at her. What made her cut her hair?

(Chuimse 1) Girls Clique: Oh my.

Character A: Look at her. From head to toe her style totally changed.

Character C: You really shouldn’t.

(Chuimse 2) Girls Clique: Yup. Yup. Character C: We should always keep what needs to be kept.

(Chuimse 2) Girls Clique: Right. Right.

Aniri

Aniri is featured four times in the song: at the beginning of scene 1 (bar 1-3), in the middle of scene 1 (bar 11-13), between scene 1 and scene 2 (bar 35), and between scene 3 and scene 4 (bar 99).

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Kim

Jangdan

The analysis of jangdan followed the method used in previous studies in which the analysis of music has been performed after digitizing the music score.

Once the music score was digitized, musical patterns were analyzed using a computer software. For instance, Ju et al. analyzed digitized wave format files of pansori with a developed analysis algorithm to study Korean traditional music (Ju et al. 2014, 30-35).

As jangdan consists of rhythmic patterns used to accompany the main melody of the piece, the instrumental accompaniment of this piece was analyzed. The instrumental accompaniment of the piece was divided into six main phrases (each consisting of four bars) as illustrated in Appendix 1. The musical scores of the six phrases and the Huimori Jangdan were drawn using Musescore 2.0.3 created by Werner Schweer, Thomas Bonte, and Nicolas Froment (Schweer et al. 1999). In order to focus on the beats, all of the notes in each of the motifs and the beats in Huimori Jangdan were drawn as the E note, the keynote of this piece. The music scores were created in the speed of 140 bpm, which is the fastest speed in the original song and the duration of the motifs, and the Huimori Jangdan are all 9 seconds. The music scores were saved in a wave format (.wav).

To compare the waveforms, the time domain signals of the music were digitized through the Sonic Visualizer, a software that analyzes music audio files, created by Chris Cannam, Christian Landone, and Mark Sandler. The visual results of the analysis are shown in figure 9. Then, these results were saved as sets of audio data files in the .csv format (Comma-separated values) for further statistical analysis.

33 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

The Pearson correlation coefficient was assessed between the Huimori Jangdan data and the phrases shown above using SPSS 21.0 by IBM Corp.

Results indicated that there were significant correlations between the Huimori Jangdan and the phrases at the .001 level. Table 1 indicates the correlation coefficients of the Huimori Jangdan and the other six phrases (r =.319 - .463, p<.001). Therefore, it can be concluded that the underlying rhythmic pattern of â&#x20AC;&#x153;I Got a Boyâ&#x20AC;? is the Huimori Jangdan.

Table 1. Correlation coefficient of the Huimori Jangdan and the other six phrases.

Figure 10 shows an example of how Huimori Jangdan and one of the Phrases (Phrase A) are visually expressed through a Sonic Visualizer.

Traditional Roots in Modern Korea Use of Features of Korean Traditional Vocal Music This paper identifies the presence of aniri, chuimse, Huimori Jangdan, the call-and-response structure, and a narrative structure similar to that of the pansori in “I Got a Boy.” The underlying rhythmic pattern of “I Got a Boy” is the Huimori Jangdan. Since Huimori Jangdan is one of the fastest Korean traditional rhythmic patterns (presto), it is used at the climax of a pansori performance or the happiest moments of the plot. Similarly, this rhythmic pattern is used throughout “I Got a Boy” to render the piece energetic and suitable for sprightly dance moves. As mentioned above, aniri is used in pansori to mark the transition between scenes and enable singers to improvise their performance according to audience reactions, which allows the art to be more interactive. Similar to aniri in pansori, aniri in “I Got a Boy” are placed at the beginning and between the scenes to signal transitions. The singers in Girls’ Generation who perform chuimse (Jessica, Tiffany, and Suyeong) frequently improvise the content of aniri according to the performance ambiance.

The most important aspect of pansori performance is active communication among the performers and between the performers and the audience. The audience uses chuimse to communicate with singers, shouting out interjections or statements of encouragement. Chuimse added by drummers serve to reinforce the lyrics sung by the main singer and encourage the singer by shouting out statements of encouragement such as “Right” or “Good Job!” Similarly, when Girls’ Generation performs on stage in music programs such as Music Bank, the audience shouts out the first chuimse, “uh muh” (oh my), with the singers, making the performance lively and interactive. Other chuimse, “Right Right” or “Yup Yup” sung by the other singers, encourage and reinforce the statements of the lead singer.

This research demonstrated that elements of traditional music have been used in a successful K-Pop song. However, the use of traditional techniques in one particular song is not sufficient to conclude that this is a phenomenon or a trend that is prevalent in the K-Pop industry. Further research on other successful K-Pop songs should be conducted. Whether the use of such techniques directly contributed to the success of “I Got

a Boy” is also a question that needs to be addressed in future studies.

(Works Cited) 1. Cho, Dong Uk, and Bong Hyun Kim. 2012. “An Analysis of Preference for Korean Pop Music by Applying Acoustic Signal Analysis Techniques.” J KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering 19 (3): 211-220 2. Cultural Heritage Administration South Korea.

2011. 1995-2011 World Heritage in Korea. Seoul, Korea: Nulwa.

3. Hwang, Byung-Ki. 2006. “Beat: In Search of the Original Form of Korean Culture.” Acta Koreana 9 (1): 1-11 4. IBM Corp. 2012. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.

5. Jang, Gunjoo, and Won K. Paik. 2012, “Korean Wave as Tool for Korea’s New Cultural Diplomacy.” Advances in Applied Sociology 2 (3): 196-202.

6. Jang, Yong-seok. 2003. “A Study on the Function of ‘Aniri’ in Pansori.” Journal of Pansori 16: 203244.

7. Ju, Young-Ho, Joon-Cheol Kim, Kyoung-Suk Seo, and Joon-Whoan Lee. 2014. “Structural Analysis Algorithm for Automatic Transcription ‘Pansori’ ” The Korea Contents Society 14 (2): 28-38.

8. Kang, Ohsung. 2008. Essays on Korean Traditional Music Culture. Seoul: Minsokwon.

9. Kim, Hyunsook. 2013. “A Study on the Acoustic Characteristics of the Pansori by Voice Signal Analysis.” Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial Cooperation Society 14 (7): 3218-3222.

10. Ko, Sukyu and Youngjin Ko. 1996. Reading the Past in History. Seoul, Korea: Pulbit.

11. Oh, Sejong, Ceolsu Gang and Yongbeom Kim. 2014. “Analysis of Case of Sonic Branding Advertisement using Pansori.” The Review of Korean Cultural Studies 48: 683-711.

12. Russell, Mark James. 2014. K-pop Now: The Korean Music Revolution. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing.

13. Ryoo, Woongjae. 2009, “Globalization or the Logic of Cultural Hybridization: The Case of the Korean Wave.” Asian Journal of Communication 19 (2): 137-151.

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Kim 14. Schweers, Werner, Thomas Bonte, and Nicolas Froment. 1999. MuseScore Version 2.03. Gent, Belgium: MuseScore.

15. Shim, Doobo. 2006. “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia.” Media, Culture & Society 28 (1): 25-44.

16. Sung, Sang-Ueon. 2010. “Constructing a New Image: Hallyu in Taiwan.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 9 (1): 25-45.

17. The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. 2004. Pansori. Seoul, Korea: The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts.

18. Yang, Ok-kyung. 2015. “Literature Review on present aspects of the Joseon Dynasty Nongga.”

The Korean Folk Songs 44: 75-102.

19. Yoo, Youngjin. I Got a Boy. Seoul, Korea: Akbobada, 2013.

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Local Foundations

The Landscape of Local Foundations in China – Trends, Challenges, and Future Perspectives Minghui Fu

Minghui Fu is a student at the Wharton School, expecting their Bachelor of Laws, Master of Public Administration, and Master of Business Administration. Fu’s research focuses on infrastructure finance, development finance, and impact investing issues in emerging markets. Fu’s work benefited from a 2017 summer project at the World Bank Group, where they also previously worked on investment operations and business partnerships in Africa and the U.S. In addition, Fu has worked on investment policy and private sector development in China.

Executive Summary

this industry.3 The size, financial performance, and transparency varies among different types of foun Philanthropic giving through foundations in dations. The pattern of Chinese foundations develChina has been rising rapidly, making foundations opment is strongly shaped by the diversity of founincreasingly important players in social transfordations. mation. Driven by economic growth, China recorded • Financial performance among different types of a rapid increase of High Net-Worth Individuals (HNfoundations vary, and government support plays WIs)1 and became one of the top four markets2 in a prominent role. Some notable features of the top foundations include: first, government-supported HNWI population. Along with growing wealth and the foundations have the strongest financial perforcultural roots for charities, foundations in China have mance; second, school foundations tend to perform reached a significant scale. China foundation Center well financially; third, more “mega foundations” are (CFC), a non-profit organization that collects statistics in the private foundation category; fourth, foundaon foundations, recorded a total of 6,226 foundations as tions tend to have weak asset management capacity. of September 2017, representing a 56% annual growth • Commensurate with the rapid growth in size rate of foundations from 2002 to 2016. and numbers, activities of China’s foundations

This report reviews the landscape of foundahave become increasingly diversified in the last tions in China, and draws some conclusions to inform decade. Foundations in China traditionally devote future development and business engagement with most resources for education, poverty alleviation, these foundations. The research is primarily based on and health. A new generation of activities are exdesk review of public information, complemented by tending to Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) selected interviews in China. It also provides quantidevelopment, fintech and climate change. And tative analysis on financial and activity indicators. The foundations are increasingly attracted to emerging main findings include the following: business models, such as social enterprises, impact investing, strategic philanthropy, and Public Private • The rapid growth of foundations in China presPartnerships. China is viewed as the next frontier ents a huge market for charitable giving. In Chiof social innovation as more foundations begin to na, of the 6,226 foundations on record, 343 foundaemphasize both financial and social returns. tions have more than US$10 million of net assets, • Foundations in China typically focus on national and 71 give more than US$10 million annually.

• China does not have a clear classification of founissues, but a rising number and growing share of foundations have operated overseas.4 China’s dations. Foundations are loosely divided into public raising and non-public raising types. Non-public “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), an internationones, which could include corporate foundations, al cooperation strategy that focuses on physical family foundations, independent foundations, and connectivity and economic cooperation along the community foundations, etc., account for 74% of ancient silk road across Eurasia, the Middle East, VOLUME 8 | 36

Fu and Africa, has marked a milestone for Chinese foundations to kick start their “going out” efforts.

Attracted by the BRI opportunities, some Chinese foundations have started more activities overseas and established BRI special funds.5 • While the 2016 Charity Law marked the most significant legislative development for philanthropy in the last 40 years, there are still gaps that require further reforms. The Charity Law, which aims to ease regulations about registration and fundraising for charities, strengthen tax incentives for charitable giving, and encourage HNWIs to establish charitable trust, has catalyzed a rapid development of China’s foundation sector. However, as philanthropy in China is rapidly evolving, foundations still encounter challenges due to the lack of clarity in legislation and supervisions.

China’s foundations have become increasingly important partners for business and government, and a more pragmatic and coherent strategy can help them contribute more to business and society, including to: • Improve legal clarity, provide comprehensive regulatory system, and establish detailed guideline to offer a strong tailwind for foundation sector development; • Open up new opportunities within China’s policy framework for international cooperation to engage Chinese foundations to operate overseas; • Adopt a dual-track approach to support partnership and learning: develop strategic partnerships with foreign stakeholders for project sourcing, execution, and evaluation; and pilot initiatives and design foundations’ strategies through learning-by-doing; • Promote cross-sector engagement to design integrated solutions for maintaining sustainability with both social and financial return.

I. Emerging Trends of Local Foundations in China 1. Significant size with exponential growth

exponentially. Between 2002 and 2016, the number of foundations increased by 56% annually, reaching 6,226 as of September 2017. The 2015 statistics show that the net assets of China’s foundations amounted to 119.34 billion RMB (US$18.36 billion); annual giving amounted to 31.31 billion RMB (US$4.82 billion); and annual income amounted to 37.87 billion RMB (US$ 5.83 billion). A closer look reveals that 343 foundations have more than US$10 million in net assets, and 71 foundations have more than US$10 million annual giving in 2015.

Nevertheless, compared to their counterparts in the US (Table 1), China’s foundations are still relatively small. In its 400 years evolution, the U.S.’ foundation sector has been playing an active role in economic development and social transformation. Therefore, harnessing the potential of foundations should be at the top of China’s philanthropy sector’s agenda.

2. Diversity of foundation types

Analyzing the classifications of foundations is crucial to understand Chinese foundations’ performance and activities. Even though officially there are only two types, non-public and public fundraising, non-public raising foundations have rich diversity that requires further differentiation. First, differences among them have shaped the pattern and characteristics of Chinese foundations’ development; second, such differences reflect foundations’ motivations and needs for customized business solutions; third, the diversity in types affects the application of government policies and the foundations’ involvement in social and economic transformation.

Generally, Chinese foundations can be classified by several criteria in the literature.

• By fundraising types – public vs. non-public

Over the past 40 years, wealth in China has been fundraising:7 the Chinese law classifies foundations growing at an unprecedented rate. With rapid wealth into public fundraising and non-public fundraising accumulation, giving through foundations has grown foundations. Nearly all public fundraising founda37 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Local Foundations tions get some government support.8 Non-public fundraising foundations are not allowed to raise funds from the public. The first public foundation in China, the Chinese Children and Youth Foundation, was established in 1981.9 Non-public fundraising foundations didn’t have any legal status until the passing of the 2004 Regulations on Administrations of Foundations (RAF). Since then, the number of non-public fundraising foundations has increased five times and surpassed that of the public types in 2010. According to CFC, as of end of September, there were a total of 6,226 registered foundations, of which non-public raising foundations accounted for 74%.

• By operating parties – School vs. corporate vs. family vs. government vs. community vs. religions vs. independent foundations: This classification refers to how the foundations are hosted and operated. For example, school foundations are established by a specific school or alumni and located in the school. Corporate foundations are registered with the corporate name and operated by corporate staff. Many corporate foundations are established for assuming corporate social responsibility and public relation functions. Family foundations are defined as one whose funds are from members of a single family. At least one family member serves as an officer or board member of the foundation and as the donor.10 Independent foundations are initiated and funded by parastatal organizations, corporates, celebrities, and/or HNWIs and operated by professionals for serving charity causes in which those parties are interested. It is difficult to disentangle the independent foundations’ complex background, but most appear non-public. CFC records 343 foundations across China with more than US$10 million net assets. Among these, government-supported foundations accounts for 62%; school, corporate, independent, and family foundations respectively represent 22%, 8%, 5%, and 1% of this wealthiest foundation group.

• By operating areas: This classification is based on the geographical region, which also determines the supervisory jurisdiction. Local foundations are under the supervision of local Civil Affairs Bureaus; national foundations, which are allowed to operate

projects across China, are required to report directly to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Four foundations also operate overseas.

3. Financial performance of foundations

Financial performance among different types of foundations vary, heavily affected by government support. Based on data from CFC, the top 25 foundations were selected by different financial indicators, including net assets, annual giving, investment return, and annual income. The distribution by types of foundations are shown in Figure 1.11 The key results are: Figure 1. Financial Indicators of Major Foundations in China Top 25 Foundations with Most Net Assets

Top 25 Foundations with Most Annual Giving

Top 25 Foundations with Most Investment Return

Top 25 Foundations with Most Annual Income

• First, government-supported foundations have the strongest financial performance. This situation is probably due to their long operating history and accumulated experiences, significant government resources to leverage, and the ease of fundraising given their public fundraising status.

• Second, school foundations tend to perform VOLUME 8 | 38

Fu well financially. This is because most of the school foundations only involve conservative funding of practical research and profitable higher-education programs. However, the 2016 Annual Report on non-public fundraising foundations published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs defined only five school foundations as charitable groups.

• Third, more “mega foundations” in the private foundation category (including corporate, family, or independent foundations) are emerging with significant financial power. For example, if we use US$10 million as a threshold to distinguish mega foundations, fourteen private foundations (e.g., Laoniu, Tencent, and Shenhua Foundations) have annual giving of more than US$ 10 million; eighteen private foundations (e.g., Laoniu, One Foundation, and Alibaba) have annual income of more than US$10 million; 34 private foundations have net assets of more than $US 10 million; and three private foundations have annual investment return of more than US$10 million. Almost all these private foundations are backed by HNWIs and/or their corporations.

• Fourth, foundations tend to have weak asset management capacity. This refers to the capacity to manage the assets for capital appreciation. The Ministry of Civil Affairs 2016 Annual Report finds that 36% of the non-public raising foundation has zero return on investment. YouChange, a foundation which acts as a social enterprise venture capital, suffered a loss of US$ 460,000 in 2016. Traditionally, Chinese foundations are too conservative to make profit through investment. They rely more on fundraising and government subsidies.

4. Sector areas of foundation activities

Traditional charity areas, such as social welfare, health, and children still dominate foundations’ activities. The CFC database captured the activities of more than 6,000 foundations in China. These foundations contributed about US$4.82 billion in 2015 to support activities in 30 themes. A majority of foundations concentrate in five themes: Education (28%), Poverty Reduction (13%), Children and Youth Development (9%), Medical Aid (6%), Scientific Research 39 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

(6%), and Disaster Relief (5%). 12 Figure 2. Themes of Activities of Foundations in China 5%

5%

3% 28%

5% 6% 6% 9%

21% 13%

Education

Others

Poverty Reduction

Children and Youth Development

Medical Aid

Scientific Research

Disaster Relief

Culture

Senior

Art

However, commensurate with the rapid growth, themes of China’s foundations’ activities have become more diversified in the last decade. New areas include SME development, climate change, and technologic innovation. Some private foundations have tapped into entrepreneurship development. For example, Jack Ma set up a Special Entrepreneurship Fund in Hong Kong with HK$1 billion (US$154 million) to support young entrepreneurs. Oceanwide Foundation supported youth entrepreneurship in the less-developed western China region by providing US$2.5 million matching fund to entrepreneurship projects of 367 college students. Heungkong Chari-table Foundation launched a Fund for Female Entrepreneurship in 2011.

Climate change has become a hot topic for Chinese foundations. Currently, 246 foundations are working on related sustainable development issues. For example, China Green Carbon Foundation, the first nationwide foundation dedicated to increase carbon sinks in China, launched a forestry carbon offsetting program that encourage 10 industries to offset carbon emissions of about 148,000 tons CO2.

Although not yet a well-categorized group, technology innovation, including fintech and machine learning, also attracted funding from foundations. In 2017, the very first Blockchain Development Foundation in China was established by some renowned VCs in Beijing,13 focusing primarily on increasing public awareness and promoting supportive policy environ-

Local Foundations ment of technological innovation. Other recent players include China Guanghua Foundation, Tianjin Haihe Fintech Foundation, Shanghai Technology Development Foundation, and Guangzhou Technology Foundation.

5. Evolving innovations in the business model

Chinese foundations are also adapting to new trends in philanthropy that supports different business models, such as social enterprises, impact investing, and strategic philanthropy.

Traditionally, Chinese foundations prefer to implement their own charity programs. However, a review of the CFC database indicates that the larger the foundation, the more grant-making activities they have for others to implement activities. Over half of the foundations with more than US$10 million assets provide grants to projects that fit their program interests and evaluation system.14 For example, Narada Foundation, a firm supporter of social enterprise development, funded seven projects to provide training and zero-interest loans, totaling US$ 307,000 to social entrepreneurs in 2016. The China Social Entrepreneur Foundation (YouChange) has acted as a venture capital for social organizations for ten years and jointly launched a Social Impact Fund in 2013.

Recently, the combination of philanthropy and investment has become more typical. Leaders of the young generation of foundations have global educational background and work experience, and many believe that philanthropy is not just about writing checks but more about ensuring the money given creates differences and sustainable impact. Looking ahead, foundations in China are likely to embrace more co-investment opportunities with equity and debt financiers who are interested in financing innovation.

6. Increasing partnerships with government initiatives overseas

In 2013, Chinese government launched its BRI, which aims to provide more supportive policies and funding for investment, infrastructure, trade, and culture exchange across Eurasia, Middle East, and Africa.

This initiative also created opportunities for Chinese

foundations to explore international cooperation on charitable causes given the “public goods” coverage of this initiative.

BRI marked a milestone for Chinese foundations to kick start their “going out” efforts. First, more foundations – especially non-public fundraising foundations, including Laoniu Foundation, Heren Foundation, and Huamin Charitable Foundations – have participated in international charity cooperation in countries along the “Belt and Road”. Second, as significant results of the 2017 Belt and Road Forum of International Cooperation, “China will provide replenishment of $1 billion to the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, and to support the implementation of 100 Happy Home Projects, 100 Anti-Poverty Projects, 100 Health Recovery Projects and other projects in the relevant countries.”15 This package has provided a clear direction and funding incentive for Chinese foundations’ overseas efforts, with opportunities in new locations that can leverage their existing resources and expertise.

Third, in 2015, Chinese foundations made a historical breakthrough by establishing overseas representative offices: China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) built its overseas offices in Burma and Nepal; and the Amity Foundation, a religious foundation in China, set up its representative office in Ethiopia. These efforts can support Chinese foundation to create tighter local roots and more sustainable and long-term developmental impact overseas.

II. Legal Environment for Foundations in China 1. The relationship between the new Charity Law and previous regulations

The 2016 Charity Law serves as an overarching law that clarifies the role and responsibilities of foundations. It defines the scope of charity practices, the requirements and responsibilities of different charity groups, incentives for charitable giving, and regulations for investment activities. For example, the Charity Law gives a clear definition of charity groups as “lawfully registered non-profit organizations whose main purpose is carrying out charitable activities…Charitable groups may adopt models of social organization such as foundations, social associations, or social service orgaVOLUME 8 | 40

Fu nizations (Chapter II, Article 8 and 11).”16 Foundations have much higher capital threshold for registration than the other two categories of charity groups, ranging from US$ 0.31-1.23 million.

The Charity Law also helps streamline the application of other related legislations and regulations.

There are a series of regulations/laws related to foundations that existed before the passing of the Charity Law, including the 1999 Law on Donation for Public Welfare and the 2004 Regulations on Administrations of Foundations (RAF). The Law on Donation for Public Welfare mainly regulates individuals and organizations’ charitable giving so that there are some overlaps with Charity Law’s Chapter III--Charitable Giving. In China’s legal system, Charity Law as a new law is superior to the old laws if there are any conflicts in description.

RAF, which regulates the detailed requirement, procedure, governance, and operations for foundations, is under revision to be better compatible with the Charity Law. It is notable that not all foundations in China are recognized as charitable groups. For those foundations who didn’t register as charitable groups with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, their activities only need to comply with RAF. 2. Management regulations and implementation guidelines

In addition, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has a set of “implementation guidelines” that underpin the legal system regarding charitable groups, including guidelines on registration, public fundraising activities, filing for Internet platforms for public fundraising, filing for charitable trusts, annual charitable giving and administrative costs, etc.. Many foundations found the regulations on annual charitable giving and administrative costs to have a strong impact on their daily operations and project implementation because foundations are required to disburse at least 8% of their registered capital annually and keep administration cost less than 10% of the annual expenditure. There are also different requirements regarding expenditure for public and non-public fundraising foundation. For example, no less than 70% of previous year’s income must be spent on public benefit activities in public fundraising foundations; no less than 9% of previous year’s surplus must be spent on 41 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

public benefit activities in private fundraising foundations.17 3. Other related laws and regulations

The applicable legislations include Enterprise Income Tax Law of People’s Republic of China, Regulation on the Implementation of Tax Law, and Trust Law. Also, the General Rules of the Civil Code cover foundations’ tax benefit, Charitable Trusts, and property protection.18 III. Policy Constraints for Further Development of China’s Foundations 1. Foundations lack a standard classification and corresponding guidance on the applicable laws and regulations.

Official classification only includes public fundraising and non-public fundraising.19 In contrast, in the more developed Western countries, there is more detailed classification about family foundations, private foundations, etc. These classifications are supported by corresponding regulations and guidelines. Take family foundations, for example: the current legal system in China does not cover their establishment and management. Some famous billionaires such as Niu Gengsheng and Cao Dewang are pioneers in setting up family foundations, but experienced extremely burdensome process.20 Therefore, establishing a comprehensive classification of foundations in line with international norms and issuing corresponding guidance on applicable laws will provide more incentives for HNWIs and support foundation’s healthy development in China.

2. Foundations lack clear regulatory and policy support to engage in charity activities overseas.

China Charity Development Report found that only 37 foundations had engaged in charitable activities overseas as of 2014, less than 1% of the total.21 The lack of clear regulations contributed to the result.

Chinese foundations’ “going out” still relies on caseby-case approvals by the supervising agencies (such as Ministry of Civil Affairs), adversely affecting project

Local Foundations efficiency and results.

For example, 2008 was the first year for The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) to conduct an overseas aid project to build the Abu Ushar Friendship Hospital in Sudan. Since there was no clear rule or responsible agencies for foundations to set up an overseas account for disbursement, CFPA had to explore solutions with many regulatory agencies through learning-by-doing. In the end, the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council approved it as a special case.

This case reflects the urgent need to establish clear regulations and streamlined approval to support Chinese foundations’ international activities, given the 2016 Charity Law has no clear provision on international activities.22 3. Foundations lack legal support in tax incentives.

As prominent examples, the initiators of top private foundations in China - Jack Ma, Pony Ma, and Niu Gensheng - all set their charitable trusts overseas due to concerns about China’s “not-yet-perfect” laws about tax incentives for charitable giving. So far, China has not passed any tax incentive laws or regulations that clearly cover foundations, contributing to several issues. First, investment activities conducted by charitable groups cannot receive tax benefits in accordance with current laws. This particularly affects foundations’ asset management. Second, professional staff’s compensation is required to be below twice the average salary in the registered place, as a prerequisite to gain the tax exemption status. This makes the job opportunities in foundations unattractive to competent professionals.

Third, tax deduction for individuals and corporations’ donations doesn’t include non-monetary forms, such as property and securities. These gaps have discouraged many HNWIs to establish foundations in China.

4. Foundations lack clear regulations to guide fundraising on the internet or through social media.

nation of convenient platform and public awareness on philanthropy create impressive results: Tencent Charity raised US$44 million from 6.8 million people in three days during its “99 Charity Day” in 2016.23 While internet giants, such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu, actively publish projects and call for small-scale habitual giving on their platforms, the public has been questioning the transparency of online charitable giving.

To regulate internet fundraising, Charity Law designates thirteen qualified platforms. However, there are significant ambiguities in the regulation and designation of supervision agencies.24 For example, there is no regulation about the qualification for individuals to make online fundraising requests. Moreover, the donation platform and publishing platform are required to be the same in some articles but separated in others.

These ambiguities present risks both for foundations’ fundraising and fraud prevention.

IV. Major Stakeholders that Influence China’s Foundations Development 1. Government Agencies

The Charity Law stipulates that the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) oversee charity work nationwide; civil affairs bureaus of local governments at or above the county level oversee the charity work within their respective jurisdictions. But many foundations, especially public fundraising foundations, are governed by a dual registration and administration system. Apart from MCA, these foundations would have additional supervisors that are closely related to foundations’ sector focus. These foundations would have to get permissions from both supervising agencies for operating overseas activities or cooperating with international agencies.

2. Academia and Research Institutes

There are some outstanding research institutes dedicated to philanthropy development in China. Es Internet and social media platforms are shaking tablished in 2010 by Beijing Normal University and up traditional philanthropy in China. The public can One Foundation, the China Philanthropy Research Ineasily access real-time charity news and make dona- stitute (CPRI) of Beijing Normal University is the most tions via online-banking and third-party electronic plat- influential one. Other renowned research institutes informs, such as WeChat wallet and Alipay. This combi- clude: Institute for Philanthropy, Tsinghua University; VOLUME 8 | 42

Fu Center for Civil Society Studies, Peking University; V. Conclusions and Implications for Engagement with China Institute for Philanthropy and Social Innovation, Chinese Local Foundations Renmin University; and Shanghai Amity Philanthropy Research Center.

• The rapid development of foundations in China requires more favorable legal environment and cus3. Advocacy Groups tomized policy support. The 2016 Charity Law has kickstarted the reform for philanthropy. Follow-up

Some advocacy groups have huge overlaps with efforts on establishing legal clarity, comprehensive foundations and research institutes in philanthropy. Chiregulatory system, and detailed guidelines would na Global Philanthropy Institute (CGPI) can be considoffer a strong tailwind for the foundations’ develered as the most resourceful and innovative advocacy opment. group. Founded by five prominent Chinese and U.S. • China’s international cooperation framework opens philanthropists--Bill Gates, Ray Dalio, Niu Gensheng, up new opportunities for engaging local foundations He Qiaonyu, and Ye Qingjun--the institute established to operate overseas. China’s BRI would encourage an education system that cultivates philanthropists and more cooperation between local foundations and foundation leaders in China. After attending programs foreign partners. China’s plan on setting up an interat CGPI, some HNWIs alumni have joined the giving national development cooperation agency26 would pledge initiated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.25 support foundations on deploying capital and human resources, as well as motivate foundations to 4. Chamber of Commerce assume a bigger role in charity activities overseas.

• Some foundations are gearing towards more inno Chambers of Commerce typically have HNvative areas, such as fintech or climate changes.

WIs and corporations as members, and therefore these They are also adopting innovative business models, types of organizations strongly influence fundraising such as strategic philanthropy, impact investing, and charitable activities. For example, the All-China and public private partnerships. Local foundations Federation of Industry & Commerce (ACFIC) and the should employ a dual-track approach: on the one United Front Work Department of Communist Party of hand, they should develop strategic partnerships China Central Committee (UFWD) organized the Chiwith foreign stakeholders for project sourcing, exna Guangcai Program, which encourages the private ecution, and evaluation; on the other hand, they sector to help eliminate poverty through commercial should pilot initiatives and design their foundations’ investments. Some overseas Chambers of Commerce, own strategies through learning-by-doing. e.g., China-Africa Business Council, also provide as- • It is important to promote cross-sector engagement sistances to foundations’ overseas projects and enterto provide integrated solutions for both social and prises’ Corporate Social Responsibility activities. financial return. For example, foundations may need more market-oriented solutions for capital 5. Other Influencers appreciation, which can benefit from tailored professional wealth management services. Also, gov In China, some well-connected non-governernments, private sectors, and social organizations mental organizations also have strong convening power together can unlock more resources for sustainable among Chinese HNWIs and corporate foundations. Ordevelopment and social investing projects. ganizations such as Gates Foundation and the Paulson Institute strives to advance sustainable growth in spe- (Endnotes) cific sectors and bring spillover effects of global best 1. According to Capgemini (https://www.worldwealpractices to local foundation. The management knowthreport.com/), HNWIs are defined as “people havhow transfer is especially essential for local foundaing in-vestable assets of US$1 million or more, tions. excluding primary residence, collectibles, consum43 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Local Foundations ables, and con-sumer durables”.

2. Other three are the United States, Germany, and Japan, the World Wealth Report 2017.

3. The 2016 Charity Law allows non-public raising foundations to apply for public donations. Increased con-versions of non-public raising to public raising foundations have been observed.

4. As of 2015, four foundations in China had staff located overseas, including China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, China Youth Development Foundation, The Amity Foundation, and The One Foundation. They mainly focus on education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation.

5. For example, the Overseas Chinese Charity Foundation of China established a “Belt and Road Special Chari-ty Fund” and initiated a “Belt and Road” M&A Fund with US$1.5 billion commitments. The Overseas Chinese Charity Foundation. “Support BRI and Promote finance and charity cooperation in Karamay.” June 14, 2017. http://www.sohu. com/a/148903605_725947 6. Sources: China Foundation Center. http://en.foundationcenter.org.cn/; and Foundation Center. http:// foundationcenter.org/. accessed in September 2017.

7. Public fundraising type represents those foundations which generally derive their funding or support primarily from the general public, receiving grants from individuals, government, and private foundations; Non-public fundraising foundations typically gain its funding from a single individual, a family, or a corporation, mainly through private channels and networks.

8. The supporting government agencies can decide the Public raising or Non-public raising status for the affili-ated foundations based on their needs, making it easily to gain the public fundraising status.

In contrast, fewer private independent foundations (less than 30) were able to obtain the public fundraising status. A review of national foundation database with 3,342 samples in 2015 suggested the most common types of foundations are government-affiliated, public raising foundations, and private independent and non-public raising foundations.

9. UNDP. Unleashing the Potential of Philanthropy in China. 2015.

10. The Economist Intelligence Unit. Passing the Torch:

Next-Generation Philanthropists. BNP Paribas Individual Philanthropy Report. 2017.

11. Data was compiled from China Foundation Center http://www.foundationcenter.org.cn/, accessed in September 2017.

12. Data was compiled from China Foundation Center http://www.foundationcenter.org.cn/, accessed in September 2017.

13. Blockchain Development Foundation. “Asian Blockchain Development Foundation formally estab-lished.” June 20, 2017. http://finance.people. com.cn/n1/2017/0620/c1004-29351133.html.

14. Based on the CFC database.

15. Xinhua News Agency. “Interpretation of Xi Jinping’s Speech at Belt and Road Forum of International Coop-eration.”. May 15, 2017. http://news. ifeng.com/a/20170515/51092521_0.shtml 16. Translated by China Development Brief. “The English version of The Charity Law of The People’s Republic of China.”. April 12, 2016. http://www. ngocn.net/news/2016-04-12-db0a48c60a8b1c67. html 17. Zhenyao Wang, ed. A Practical Guide to China’s Charity Regulations. Beijing: Yanshi Publisher, 2016.

18. Zhenyao Wang, ed. A Practical Guide to China’s Charity Regulations. Beijing: Yanshi Publisher, 2016.

19. According to the 2016 Charity Law, non-public fundraising foundations can obtain the status of public fundraising if they meet several requirements.

20. Yinglu Li, Director, Center for Charity Law at China Philanthropy Research Institute, Beijing Normal Uni-versity, interviewed by the Author, Beijing, September 15, 2017.

21. Yang, Tuan, ed. China Charity Development Report. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2015.

22. It only mentions overseas donation’s tax reduction and exemption from import duties in Article 80.

23. Anne Liu. “Three Changes for 99 Charity Day in Three Years.”. September 6, 2017. https://news. qq.com/a/20170906/079330.htm 24. There are two regulations associated with the 2016 Charity Law. VOLUME 8 | 44

Fu 25. Guo Su, Associated President and Chief Development Officer, China Global Philanthropy Institute, inter-viewed by the Author, Beijing, September 15, 2017.

26. Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd; Editing by Paul Tait & Simon Cameron-Moore.

China says new agency will improve foreign aid coordination.â&#x20AC;?. March 12,2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-aid/china-says-new-agency-will-improve-foreign-aid-coordination-idUSKCN1GP02J

45 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Burial Custom

“Let Go of The Dead Or Serve Them As If They Were Alive?”

A Preliminary Study on A Less Well Known Burial Custom Yuyang Wang

Yuyang Wang is a first-year MA student, who received their Bachelor of Arts with Honor in Art History, East Asian Studies, and Italian Studies. Wang is expecting their Master’s degree in May 2019, and their research is in Art History and Archaeology of Early China (Neolithic Period, Bronze Age, Iron Age), as well as related burial customs. Wang’s work is informed by an excavation on a Neolithic site in Shandong, China in 2014 and by a research paper titled “A Study of the Destroyed Bronze Objects in Tombs of Yin-Shang Period, Anyang Area.”

Some of the most significant archaeological finds that reflect burial customs of the ancient China include the discovery of the Yin Ruins in 1928, the Mawangdui Han Tomb in 1972, and the first Emperor’s terracotta warriors in 1974. The large number of high-quality bronze vessels, oracle bones, human and nonhuman sacrificial remains from the Shang Dynasty (about 1600 - 1046 BCE), a great variety of daily objects, paintings, and food from the Western Han Dynasty (206 - 9 AD), and lifelike statues of soldiers and chariots from the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BCE) unveil the massive production of grave goods of early China.

These grave goods were buried with the dead to serve them in their afterlife, known as the custom of “serving the dead as if they were alive.” The first written record of this custom is in Xunzi, a book attributed to the Confucian philosopher Xun Kuang, during the Warring State Period (453 - 221 BCE). He advises people to: “In funerary rites, one uses life to adorn death; one sends off the dead in a way that greatly exemplifies their life. Thus one serves the dead as though they were alive; one serves the deceased as though they were present; end and beginning are as one.”1 “This is sorrow, reverence, serving the dead as if serving the living, serving the departed as if serving those who are present, an appearance without the inner reality, imagery become a ritual.”2

Archaeological finds from the burial sites of the Han Dynasty display a significant increase of the qual-

ity, the variety, and the amount of the grave goods in comparison to its prior civilizations. And the construction of the Han tombs became massively elaborate and decretive. These evidences would suggest that the idea of “serving the dead as if they were alive” was extremely popular during this time. The innovation of two new kinds of grave good, mingqi (spiritual objects) and the jianzhumingqi (constructive spiritual objects), proves that the Han people intended to build a duplicated world for the dead inside of their tombs.3 These grave goods of various objects, tools, models of buildings, and animals confirm that two major activities of the Han people – the production and the entertainment – were considered as vital to the dead as they were to the living.4 However, from an anthropological point of view, burial custom was not a product of highly developed civilizations, but rather a development from the primitive mentality of human as any other human behaviors once were. It is obvious that the burial customs of China did not begin from the Han Dynasty, it began even before the formation of complex societies. Although the Han Dynasty is critical when it comes to understanding the concepts of life and death of early China, scholars need to take prehistoric burial traditions into consideration instead of only focusing on later examples.

There is no doubt “serving the dead as if they were alive” became the mainstream burial custom and have shaped the Chinese culture since the Han Dynasty.

Nevertheless, the other burial tradition had its significance during different times and regions. This paper will use both archaeological evidence and historical documents to address the opposite belief to “serving the death as if they were alive,” to demonstrate the diversified burial cultures in early China, and to discuss the possible reasons behind this custom. This paper will not VOLUME 8 | 46

Wang try to disprove the popularity of the mainstream burial tradition, but to simply show that the custom of “letting go of the dead” also existed and co-existed with the belief of “serving the death as if they were alive.”

Historical Background

The trace of the earliest burial could possibly be dated to the Paleolithic period when the Peking Man started to bury dead bodies at certain locations in Zhoukoudian, Beijing.5 But a few pieces information from a Paleolithic burial site are not comprehensive enough to be identified as a burial custom. Only in the middle to late Neolithic period were there locations which could be called burial sites. A few examples would be the excavated burial pits from the Yaoshao Culture (5,000 3,000 BCE) in Shaanxi; and discoveries of human and animal sacrifices in tombs from the Liangzhu Culture (3,400 - 2,250 BCE) in Zhejiang.

The first recognized dynasty of China, the Shang Dynasty, plays an essential role in Chinese archaeology since scholars were able to study the Shang’s worship system through the earliest writing on the oracle bones.6 Archaeologists have discovered sacrificial burial pits in regional cultures that were influenced by the Shang’s central culture, but the oracle bones finally confirmed a mature stage of the ancient worship system. The key elements of the Shang people’s ritual were to ask for and interpret the divination from the spirits and to plan the major events according the answers given by the gods. Interestingly, Shang people did not believe that they were able to communicate with the gods directly. Instead, they believed that only the spirits of their dead family members had the ability to speak to the gods. The ancestral spirits were the vital part of receiving divination since the supreme power allowed them to be closer to the gods. Thus, if the living people served their ancestors well, they would be protected and blessed with divination from the gods.

This belief made ancestral worship the cornerstone of the Shang people’s ritual and sacrifice as it formed an eternal bond between the living family and their ancestors. This relationship between the living and the dead could be the origin of why people thought serving the dead as if they were alive was the righteous practice.

And this ancestral worship could be the foundation of 47 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

the mainstream burial custom of the Han Dynasty.

Nevertheless, the oracle bones are still limited in terms of reflecting the Shang’s worship ritual simply because the oracle bones that were discovered from Anyang represent only the divinations of the last phase of the Shang Dynasty, the Late Shang Period. Having no oracle bones from early part of the Shang history challenges scholars to draw religious connections between the Shang Dynasty and the preceding culture.

Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether the ancestral worship practice originated from the Shang or if it was only inherited by them. Meanwhile, knowing that the oracle bones were largely discovered in the Anyang site, the capital of the Late Shang Period, allows us to question the prevalence of ancestral worship. It is possible that only the central Shang culture practiced this worship and that the other regional Shang cultures had their own way to worship. The limitation of time and region gives us reasons to question whether treating the living and the dead with same attitude was the sole belief among the Shang people. By examining material evidence, such as burial objects and organic remains like human skeletons, archaeologists discovered that prehistoric people, and even the Shang people, had other beliefs on the matters of life and death.

Literature Review

Excavation reports from various locations in China unveil some unique burial customs of ancient time, such as suiwuzang (destroyed object burial), huishizang (dissected body burial), quzhizang (bent body burial), and ercizang (secondary burial).7 Related research have been conducted by scholars. Song Zhaolin discussed the custom of dissecting the body in cultures of early China;8 Huang Weidong researched the topic of destroyed objects;9 L. V. Grinsell wrote a chapter to demonstrate the breaking of objects as a funeral rite around the world.10 These scholars came to the conclusion that different treatments of the dead were created and practiced by people from various locations.

Although scholars have conducted comprehensive research on each individual topic, current scholarship missed the opportunity to connect archaeological evidence with philosophical and religious thought about life and death. Some articles failed to address the fact

Burial Custom that different burial customs once co-existed in early China, and some scholars of funerary art introduce their research papers with the claim that Chinese people have always believed in the concept of “serving the dead as if they were alive.” It is important to not only provide the narrative of the coexistence of different burial customs, but also to examine the reason behind each custom and how they reflect the mentality of ancient Chinese. The following paragraphs will be discussing the differences between death and life with supports from detailed material findings.

Destroyed Objects

The concept of suiwuzang, a custom of burying destroyed objects, is less well known than other burial traditions because it was a custom of an earlier time and adding specific religious meanings and pictorial representation onto grave goods only became popular in later dynasties, thus becoming more valuable for research. For example, objects with scenes painted onto them could offer scholars more information about the documented events of the tomb owner’s life and his or her social rank.11 In those cases, it would only make sense that the objects were buried in complete forms so that scholars could conduct their studies based on a complete image. Nevertheless, we should understand that the most significant aspect of any grave good is the concept of “being with the dead” and that they are “occupied by the dead.” Therefore, knowing that death was the end of life and believing that spirits had supreme power had given people of complex societies and early civilizations a reason to draw the line between the living and the dead.

Not every broken objects excavated from sites could be defined as a destroyed object. Reasons such as tomb robbery, earthquakes, underground water erosion, could also result in the incomplete form of burial objects but share no connection with the burial custom.

Therefore, a destroyed object is an object that was intentionally destroyed by a human before his or her burial. In general, five kinds of physical appearances could mark whether an object was intentionally destroyed: an object broken into pieces and buried in different locations; an object broken into pieces, some of which are missing from the primary context; an object was bro-

ken into a large amount of pieces; an object bares manmade cracks; and an object bares man-made distortion.

These five states of physical appearance of objects represent the damage of intentional human behavior rather than damages made by any other forces. However, it is also important to understand the fact that the different quality of each material would affect the physical appearances of each destroyed object. Usually, these key features are included in the archaeological reports.

Burying destroyed objects was commonly practiced in numerous regions across China. A ceramic object of the Dawenkou Culture, excavated in the Xiahou site in Shandong, was broken into halves and placed at two locations. A few other objects were buried in between them intentionally.12 Hongshan Culture also bears this custom. From about eight tombs in the Jiajiangliang site in Yangyuan County, Hebei, archaeological excavation uncovered numerous objects that were intentionally broken into pieces and placed by the tombs owners’ heads or by each side of their body.13 Interestingly, there were destroyed objects used to decorate the tomb owner’s body.14 There are many bronze destroyed objects unearthed in some royal tombs in the Yin Ruins, which means this custom was carried through the royal family of Shang and the elites.15 A number of tombs from the Western Zhou Dynasty, in both the Yellow River region and the Yangzi River region, were found to have destroyed weapons as well.16 During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, people from the state of Qin practiced the custom of burying destroyed mirrors.17 Since bronze mirrors were sometimes understood as objects that kept the soul, the action of destroying bronze mirrors was seen as a way of releasing the soul.

The burial of destroyed objects in the tomb was also commonly practiced in different regions of the world. In Ancient Egypt, some stone and ceramic objects were intentionally “killed” by poking holes at the bottoms of each object. During the Iron Age in Northern Europe, the Vikings would bend their sword for a similar reason of “killing the spirits of the objects.” During the Hellenistic Period in Mycenae, Greek people would toast to the dead during the funeral and break their cups as the last step of the rite. Then, the fragments of the cup would be buried at the entrance of the tomb.18

In addition, the custom of destroying objects VOLUME 8 | 48

Wang existed in another form: burning the objects before burial. Archaeological evidence shows that this custom was practiced by minority groups in Northern China.

Huang points out that burning objects carries the same function as physically breaking them since both actions allow the object to be realistically destroyed and spiritually passed into the underworld with the dead.19 But Zhang Bibo thinks that the action of burning may have its own meanings. Since burning objects was also commonly practiced in different regions around the world, it is possible that the fire was used to kill a common fear among the primitive people, the fear of death.20 That said, fire was used to kill the object so that the living beings would not be haunted by the spirits of the dead.

The Records of the Three Kingdoms has a passage describing the burning of the objects:

“When honorable more solid dies, there is a coffin to collect his body, [people would] cry as soon as he passes away, songs will be sung and dance will be performed to send him on his journey when he is about to be buried. The well-fed dog will be guided by rope, and people should take the horse, the clothing, and the accessories of life, which belongs to the dead, and burn these things in order send them [away.]”21

It is not difficult to understand that suiwuzang was a well-established custom. At the same time, the reason for the practice was entirely rational too. There are mainly four possible explanations. First, to destroy the object is to “kill” the object, and only then these objects could be taken into the afterlife since they are no longer in the complete form; second, the destroyed form of the object would prevent spirits from coming back and seeking their belongings; third, this action might be related to the ancient ritual of exorcism, called fangxiangshi qugui;22 last, breaking the object is to release the sprites. There might be different reasons behind suiwuzang in each region, but these four explanations share one thing in common: to distinguish the living and the dead, rather than serving the dead as if they were alive.23

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Dissected-Body-Burial

Material evidence suggests that objects were not the only thing people destroyed during the prehistoric period. An even more extreme custom was practiced by different cultures in various regions of China: huishizang (dissected-body-burial) is the tradition of burying the body in dissected form, which offers us valuable information on the topic of life and death, especially in early China when there were no written records. The destroyed form of the body was clearly against the belief of serving the dead as if they were alive. Thus, it proves that this belief was not yet the dominating trend at the time. The discovery in different regions supports the theory: different traditions could be carried on individually during the same time period, rather than collectively. For the purposes of this paper, it is important to note that the custom of the dissected body does not refer to the practice of human sacrifice.

In other words, the dissected bodies were tomb owners’ bodies rather than his or her slaves. The dissection of the body only occurred after the tomb owner’s death.24 Similar to suiwuzang, burying dissected bodies appears commonly among the excavations sites in China. Some bodies were discovered without toes or fingers in the Banpo site of the Yangshao Culture.25 A tomb owner in Xinkailiu site, Heilongjiang, was discovered without hands.26

Song has conducted a comprehensive study related to the discovery of the dissected body in the context of prehistoric China. He categorized this custom with four specific conditions of the body: the dissected body with his or her body parts buried in the same location; the dissected body with his or her body parts not buried in the same location; the dissected body buried with other people’s body parts; and the full body dissected.27

It is also important to take the cause of death into consideration because complex societies lacked medical knowledge of death. Even in later times, as people had learned more about death from a scientific perspective, the concept of death of old age was still different from death by unexpected causes. Song’s purpose was to categorize death into three main groups: death by natural causes, death by violence and unnatural causes, and death of infants.28 The practice of disso-

Burial Custom ciating the body according to different causes of death offers us information about the possible reasons behind this custom. A minority group called Bulang who lived in Yunan Provenance practiced dissociated-body burial for generations. Bulang people would cut off some hair from the dead person to change his or her physical appearance in order for this individual to become dead on a spiritual level. In Guizhou, elder people who died of natural causes would have his or her son remove a tooth as the last step of sending the dead to a spiritual world.29 It is likely that this practice was created from a certain religious belief or a regional ritual. However, this practice to spiritualize a body proves that people had distinguished the concepts between life and death.

People who were killed or died of unexpected reasons were considered inauspicious, and their bodies would possibly be buried in dissected form. In the Sichuan basin, people believed that death caused by extreme illness, pregnancy, suicide, or murder would turn spirits into ferocious ghosts, who would trick living beings into illness and eventually to death. This ancient logic also had people believing that spirits who died from sudden deaths would not give up their rights to living and would have higher possibilities for avenging their unfair death. Thus, people from this region would dissect the body in order to sanction the evil spirits.30 Local documents suggest that, in the Northeast part of China, people poked the dead body with a fish spear and shot arrows into them to kill the evil spirits. Song believes that sudden death could be the original reason for dissecting the body before burial.

The death of the infants was often believed to be caused by evils spirits. In many regions, family members would dissect the body of a dead infant to warn evil spirits to stay away.31 Giving birth multiple times to dead infants or deformed children was understood as “being visited by an evil spirit,” and the only way to have a healthy baby would be to dissect the dead infant. The abandonment of the infant’s body was often believed to be the abandonment of the bad fertility. This tradition become extremely cruel when the dissecting process was practiced on living infants. This custom also proves that life and death should be treated differently in some cultures. In the case of infants, it is more like a punishment.

Bent-Body-Burial

Another form of destroying the body before burial is bending the body. In a Xindian culture (about 1500–1000 BCE) site, a body was bent in an extreme way so that the hip of the body was touching the feet; three bodies discovered in the Longshan Temple in Shaanxi were bent with the lower bodies touching the chests. In a Erlitou Culture (about 1900 to 1500 BCE) site, archaeologists excavated bent bodies in various states, such as being bent on the side, bent with the face up, bent squatting and so forth. Interestingly, the Erlitou Culture also practiced the custom of burying the body horizontally, with the tomb owner’s face up.

This burial position was the mainstream way of burying the body throughout the later portion of Chinese history. The archaeological evidence once again proves that two different customs co-existed during the same period of time. Gao Quxun conducted research on the topic of the bent body in burial around the region of lower Yellow River. In his research, Gao points out that bent-body burial and regular-lied-body burial were being practiced at the same time in Yin during the Late Shang Period, especially in the Dasikong village tomb in Anyang, Henan.32

The reason behind quzhizang is still uncertain, but two possible explanations could be used support this research. One suggests that the bent form of the body is used to trap the evil spirits from leaving the body to disturb the living people.33 Scholars suspect that some bent bodies belonged to people who died of sudden causes or murder, so the bent-body-burial is similar to the dissected body in terms of purpose. Archaeological reports show that some bodies were bent in a very specific way, with the lower body bent in front of the chest area and the arms bent to hold the legs with the spine arched.

This infant-in-embryo position leads us to the second possible reason: ancient people intentionally constructed this position to release the spirit into another circle of life.34 Both explanations of quzhizang emphasize the difference between life and death. Clearly, serving the dead as if they were alive was not the major concern with this custom. It seems ancient people did not think that evil spirits should be treated well, or they would rather send those spirits into another circle of life.

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Wang Secondary Burial

This text not only describes steps of the secondary burial, but it also points out the difference between

Ercizang, secondary burial is known as second- regional customs. A few centuries later, in the Tang Dyary burial or reburial, which means that the body of the nasty, a similar custom was recorded in Wei Zheng’s dead goes through two different processes in order to Book of Sui. It describes: be buried. This custom was commonly practiced in prehistoric cultures and was carried on by different minority groups. Each region may have a different procedure to handle the body and may have different names such “At the beginning of the death, the body should be as, qianguzang (bone translocation burial), shiguzang moved out to the middle courtyard, it may not be (bone picking burial), jianguzang (bone picking burikept in the room. After collecting, the body should al), to refer to it.35 Around the Yellow River region, be sent into the mountain and set thirteen years as the time limit. To pick an auspicious date, to move people would first bury the dead for an amount of time it into a smaller coffin, this is called picking up the until the flesh had decomposed. Then, they would dig bones. Picking up bones must be done by the son in out the bones to rebury. The burial location would often law, the minority population thinks highly of their change, and this is why qianguzang was used to refer sons in law, therefore people entrust them with this this. Around the northeast China, people would burn matter. The bone pickers would take off the flesh the body first and only bury the bones. In other regions, and keep the bones, abandon the small parts and people would purposely reopen buried tombs, deconkeep the big parts.”38 struct the body, and then move the remains to another location. The actual part of the secondary burial takes Among all the excavated objects that could different forms in burial pits, wooden coffins, stone cof- fins, burial jars. Often, the secondary burial contains have reflected the belief in life and death, the T-shaped painting from Mawangdui Han Tomb is comparatively more than one set of bone remains.36

The reason behind this custom is somehow most significant. This painting depicts a funeral scene logical. The ancients believed that a person’s death is with the image of heaven and the underworld. Annalonly the soul exiting the body. Therefore, in order to ise Bulling interprets the scene as the destinations of ensure the complete state of death, the body needed to two parts of the soul, hun and po. When the hun soul be decomposed as well. Only after the physical body is wanders to heaven, the po soul would stay inside of the “dead” can the remains could be burned permanently. tomb and become the ancestor’s spirit looking after the The Muozi, an early Warrior States text, documented living branch of the family.39 This painting is obvious this custom in the Simplicity in Funerals III chapter, proof of the popularity of “serving the dead as if they saying: were alive” during the Western Han Dynasty, and it portrays the belief to be similar to ancestor worshipping.

Because of its significance, this painting could have contributed to the common misunderstanding that the “There is a state, in the south of the Chu, named ancients only acted according to this one burial tradiDanren. When their relatives die, people would let tion. From the evidence presented in previous sections, the flesh rot and abandon them, they would bury it is clear that the burial customs of China were diverse the bones after that, then they could become sons among different populations. Although the “serving the of filial piety. West of Qin, there is a state called dead as if they were alive” custom became the mainYiqu. When their relatives die, people would collect stream, one could not deny the fact that the opposite wood and set fire to burn the body, the rising smoke belief existed and was practiced. was called ‘raising to heaven,’ then they could become sons of filial piety.”37 51 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Burial Custom Historical Records

Historical documents make significant contributions to this topic since archaeological evidence is limited. These written records, such as the Muozi and the Book of Sui, that are mentioned in previous sections, could offer a description of burial customs. More importantly, these documents reflect how the ancients viewed these traditions on a philosophical and religious level. These support the study of the ancient tradition of life and death by answering some fundamental questions. The following paragraphs will be examining the classical text in order to prove that “serving the dead as if they were alive” was not the sole burial tradition.

The Strategiems of the Warring States, a text that is commonly dated to the end of the Warring State period, records a story about the Queen Dowager Xuan of the state of Qin discussing the idea of death with her attendant:

“Queen Dowager Xuan of Qin loved Wei Choufu.

When the Queen Dowager fell ill and was about to die, she issued an order, saying: ‘When I am buried, Master Wei must accompany me to death.’ Master Wei was horrified by this. Yong Rui persuaded the Queen Dowager on Master Wei’s behalf, saying: ‘Do you consider the dead to have consciousness?’”

“The Queen Dowager said: ‘They have no consciousness.”

[Yong Rui] said: ‘If your Majesty’s godlike numen is clearly aware that the dead have no consciousness, why would you vainly take the person you loved in life, and bury him with the dead, who lack consciousness? And if the dead do have consciousness, the former king has been accumulating his wrath for many days. Your Majesty, you will scarcely have the means to make amends for your transgressions – how would you have leisure for assignations with Wei Choufu?’

The Queen Dowager said: ‘Very well.’ And she desisted.”40

The dying Queen asked for her attendant to accompany her to her death. By examining this conversation with the logic of the mainstream burial custom, it is clear that Master Wei was made as a burial object to the Queen. This perhaps proves that the Queen believed in “serving the death as if they were alive” simply because she wanted Wei’s company in death as much as in life. It is not difficult to understand why the Queen had the power to make such demand. The Queen of Xuan was the king’s mother, who was ranked as the most respectful and honorable woman in the state. The Queen’s funeral standard reflects directly on whether the King was the filial son. Moreover, when the Queen become a spirit and lives inside her tomb, the living family would depend on her to communicate with the gods and bring good fortune. As Bulling points out, the paintings and the burial objects in the tomb were not made just to honor the dead; it was made to secure the living family’s blessing.41 Thus, sacrificing Master Wei would be wise for the state’s future. However, the conversation took a sharp turn when Yong Rui asked the Queen if she agrees that dead people have a consciousness. The Queen’s answer proves that she did not believe in “serving the dead as if they were alive” because she believed that dead people do not have a consciousness. In the end, the Queen agreed that she would not take Master Wei into the grave with her. In other words, the Queen refused to be served, when she dies, as if she were alive. This story is rather significant because it documents a key member of the royal family rejecting her “burial object.” One of the reasons why art historians and archaeologists often focus their research on royal tombs is that the royal family had the financial strength to fulfill the requirements of the burial custom.

This story suggests that even the royal family had the chance to choose another burial custom, which proves “serving the dead as if they were alive” was not the only belief at the time.

The Zuo Zhuan, another Warring States text, records another story related to the belief in death and the afterlife. It says:

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Wang “The people of Zheng alarmed one another about [the ghost of] Boyou [i.e. Liang Xiao, d. 543 B.C.], saying: ‘Boyou is coming!’ Then they would all run around, not knowing where they were going.

In the second month of the year in which the legal codes were cast [i.e. 536 B.C.], someone dreamt that Boyou was walking in armor, saying: ‘On renzi day, I shall kill [Si] Dai [i. e. Boyou’s killer]. On renyin day of next year, I shall also kill [Gongsun] Duan [who was in league with Si Dai].’ When renzi day came, Si Dai died, and the denizens of the citadel were even more afraid. In the month of peace with Qi and Yan [i.e. 535 B.C.], on renyin, Gongsun Duan died, and the denizens of the citadel were more frightened still. The next month, Zichan promoted Gongsun Xie and Liang Zhi [i.e.

Boyou’s son] in order to placate [the ghost]. Then he ceased. Zitaishu asked the reason. Zichan said: ‘When ghosts have a place to come home to, they do not become a menace. I afforded him a home.’”42

This story starts with the alarming situation of a ghost named Boyou running around and wanting to kill someone. The setting of the story proves that some spirits were evil and threaten people’s lives. This echoed the burial custom of huishizang and quzhizang because those customs were used to prevent the spirits’ evil-doing. The necessity of trapping evil spirits in bent bodies or killing the spirits by dissecting the bodies seems to be logical because people feared ghosts. In the end, Zichan unveils the reason why the ghost ceased his evil-doing. Zichan afforded a home for the ghost, so he would have a place to go. I argue that the character gui (return) is referring to a sense of belonging rather than a real place that ghosts go to. The notion of “ghosts would not become menace if they knew where they belong to” could explain why the ancients wanted to break the burial objects in order to release the spirits to where they belonged.

In the Analects, Confucius expresses his own concern about the belief in life and death and ghosts.

When his student Jilu asked him about this topic, Confucius did not answer Jilu, but asked two other questions in return:

53 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

“Jilu asked about the services for ghosts and spirits.

The Master said: ‘You do not yet know how to serve people. How will you be able to serve ghosts?’

‘May I be so bold as to ask about death?’

[Confucius] said: ‘You do not yet know life. How can you know death?’”43

Confucius’ teachings lies in the collective relationship between each individual’s role in the society. So when Jilu asks about the serving the ghosts, Confucius’ attitude was obvious: “we have not yet managed to serve people with good moral; why should we worry about serving the ghosts?” When Jilu asked about death, Confucius held the same attitude towards it: “we as living beings have not figure out the morality in the relationship with other living beings; why would we worry about death?” Confucius did not even discuss if ghosts really existed in the world, he simply thought that the concept was irrelevant to him.44 Another passage from the Analects records: to make sacrifices to a ghost that is not one’s own is toadying.45 With this passage, Confucius criticizes people who manipulate the Zhou sacrificial customs to flatter local rulers. This proves that spiritual worship was practiced with different agendas rather than only focusing on “serving the dead.” And the burial customs, as a key component of ancestor worship, were practiced in various ways during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Confucius’ comment confirms that religious practice and spiritual worship were sometimes innovated to serve as a political ladder, instead of communicating with the dead.

Why would Confucius have such a distanced attitude towards death and spiritual worshiping? This passage answers the question:

“Zigong asked Confucius, saying: ‘Do the dead have consciousness? Or do they not have consciousness? Confucius said: ‘I should like to say that the dead have consciousness, but I fear that filial sons and obedient grandsons would disoblige the living in sending off the dead; I should like to say that the dead have no consciousness, but I fear that unfilial sons would abandon their parents and leave them

Burial Custom unburied. Sir, you wish to know whether the dead Conclusion have consciousness or not. This is not a matter of any urgency today; in the future, you will know In conclusion, although the tradition of “serving yourself.’”46 the dead as if they were alive” was well-practiced and believed in during later dynasties, this tradition had a

Confucius had his own strategies when it came historical root from the primitive period or the Shang to ambiguous topics. When Zigong asked his master Dynasty. It does not deny the fact that other burial trawhether dead people have a consciousness, Confucius ditions and belief on life and death existed throughout answered it with his usual, uninterested attitude. How- history. Both material evidence – such as suiwuzang, ever, he also shared his concerns. If the dead had con- huishizang, and ercizang – and historical documents – sciousness, then the filial sons and grandsons would such as the Strategies of the Warriors States, the Zuo overly sacrifice themselves for the dead; if the dead had Zhuan, and the Analects – have proven that the burial no consciousness, then no one would value the filial custom in prehistoric China was diversified. There is piety anymore. Confucius analyzed this problem with no doubt that the mainstream idea of “serving the dead morality as a standard; it seems like he did not care as if they were alive” shaped Chinese culture as people whether the dead would be treated fairly. His concern still burn paper money and paper-made objects for the was determining which one benefits the morality and dead to this day. However, the fact that more than one well-being of the living people more. Two cases of be- burial custom and belief in life and death co-existed ing too filial and not being filial at all were extreme should be further expounded upon and researched in outcomes, so Confucius decided to put the questions future scholarships. aside.

We may never learn whether Confucius thought (Endnotes) the dead had consciousness or not, but he clearly did 1. Xunzi, Xunzi Lilu:. 19, 17. not think the consciousness of the dead was relevant 2. Xunzi, Xunzi Lilu: 19, 21. to morality. Because we have learned that even Con- 3. Zhou Xueying, “Constructive Burial Objects in fucius had his doubts on death and spirit worshiping, it Han Dynasty” Cultural Relics of Central China 3 (2003): 58. is obvious that, during his time, the opposite belief of “serving the dead as if they were alive” co-existed with 4. Zhou, 59. others. Perhaps it was Xunzi, who was one of the most 5. Shen, G; Gao, X; Gao, B; Granger, De. “Age of influential intellectual successors of Confucius, who Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with (26) made “serving the dead as if they were alive” a ConfuAl/(10) Be burial dating”. Nature. 458: 198. cian teaching. Later on, the Wu Emperor of the Western 6. Li Feng, Early China: A Social and Cultural HisHan made Confucianism the only legitimate school of tory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, thought in the country. This establishment and the fol2014): 56. lowing policy juxiaolian recommending the most filial 7. Zhang Bibo, “A Discovery of Huishizang, Huiqiand honest people to work in the government surely zang, and Fenwuzang Culture.” Cultural Relics of popularized this belief and encouraged people to bury Central China 2 (2005): 38. huge amounts of wealth with the dead. Nevertheless, 8. Song Zhaolin, “The Gezhizang in Minority Reother historical documents also demonstrate that this cords” Cultural Relics of Central China 2 (2003): custom was not the only one that people had believed 18-23. in. There were numbers of people such as members of 9. Huang Weidong, “Suiwuzang of Prehistoric Period” royal family or scholars who believed in the discontinuCultural Relics of Central China 2 (2003): 24-29. ity of the consciousness after death.

10. L. V. Grinsell,”The Breaking of Objects as a Funerary Rite.” Folklore 72, no. 3 (1961): 475-91.

11. Wu Hong, The Arts of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs. (Honolulu : University of VOLUME 8 | 54

Wang Hawai’i Press, 2010): 76.

12. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Archaeology Department, Shandong Archaeological Team, “The Report of the Second Excavation of Xixiahou Site,” Acta Archaeologica Sinica 3 (1986).

13. The Institute of Culture Relics of Hebei, “The Excavation Report of A Neolithic Site in Jiangjialiang, Yuanyang County, Hebei,” Archaeology 2 (2001).

14. Huang, 25.

15. Shengli Zhai, “A Preliminary Study on the Shang Dynasty Burial Custom with Destroyed Objects,” Journal of National Museum of China 92 (2011): 123-132.

16. Jing Zhongwei, “An Archaeological Observation on the Destroyed Weapon in the Western Zhou Dynasty’s Tombs,” Archaeology and Cultural Relics 4 (2006): 47-59.

17. Ma Liqing, “Simple Investigation of Unearthed Mirrors of Qin Kingdom and the People’s Custom of Destroying Mirror” The Journal of Zhengzhou University 6 (2009): 146-152.

18. Grinsell, 480. The author discusses a burial customs, all related to the breaking of objects as a rite, from various regions in his chapter. This paper selected a few characteristic examples only to demonstrate the popularity of this custom.

19. Huang, 34.

20. Zhang, 40.

21. Records of Three Kingdom, the Book of Wei, the Biography of Wuwan, Xianbei, Dongyi.

22. Gao Xiangping, “Custom of Destroyed Objects and the Phenomenon of Objects’ Spiritualization in Shang Tombs,” Archaeology and Cultural Relics 1 (2010): 48.

23. Grinsell,476. The author gives ten possible reasons why would primitive people around the world break their burial objects, however, some of the reasons are only related to the local custom. Thus, I have only mentioned the relative reasons for this topic.

24. Song, 19.

25. Shaanxi Banpo Museum, Xi’an Banpo, (Beijing: Culture Relic Publication,1968): 202.

26. The Archaeological Team of Heilongjiang, “Xinkailiu Site in Mishan County,” Acta Archaeologica Sinica 4 (1979).

27. Song, 19.

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28. Song, 20-22.

29. Xia Zhiqian, The Burial Custom of Minority Group in China, (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science Publication, 1987): 23, 24, 28.

30. Song Zhaolin “The Religious Belief and the Concept of Ghost and Deities in Minority of China” (Tokyo: Keio University Institute of Area Studies, 2001.)

31. Song, 22.

32. Gao Quxun, “The Burial Custom of Bent-Body in the Lower Region of the Yellow River, The Discussion of the Second Excavation of South of Dasikong, Anyang,” Field Excavation Reports 2 (1927): 121-166.

33. Tan Fang, “An Examination on the Prehistoric Burial Custom of Bent-Body and Dissected-Body in Dingshi Mountain, Yongning, Guangxi,” Culture Relics of the South 2 (2010): 76.

34. Tan, 76.

35. Zhang Kaisheng, “The Secondary Burial of the Clan Society of China,” Cultural Relics of Central China 1 (1991): 41-46.

36. Cao Guicen, “A Discussion on the Secondary Burial in Yangshao Culture,” Cultural Relics of Central China, special edition, (1986).

37. Muozi, Simplicity in Funerals III. 38. Wei Zheng, Book of Sui. 39. Anneliese Bulling, “The Guide of the Souls Picture,” Oriental Art 20, 2 (1974): 158-173.

40. Strategies of the Warring States, The Strategies of Qin, Chapter II, Queen Dowager Xuan of Qin loved Wei Choufu.

41. Anneliese Bulling, “The Eastern Han Tomb at HoLin-Ko-êrh (Holingol),” Archives of Asian Art 31(1997-1998): 80.

42. Zuo Zhuan, the Seventh Year of Duke of Zhao.

43. Analects, jishi 22.760.

44. Paul R. Goldin, “The Consciousness of the Dead as a Philosophical Problem in Ancient China.” The Good Life and Conceptions of Life in Early China and Graeco-Roman Antiquity.

45. Analects, jishi 4.132.

46. Yang Zhaoming, Kongzi jiayu tongjie fu chutu ziliao yu xiangguan yanjiu, Chutu wenxian yizhu yanxi congshu 19 (Taipei: Wanjuanlou,2005), 8.101 (“Zhisi” ).

Second Indochina Conflict

Reverberations of American Intervention: Remnants of the Second Indochina Conflict Luke Kertcher

Luke Kertcher is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is studying a major in international relations with a minor in Asian American studies, while pursuing a graduate certification in Global Human Rights. Kertcher’s primary research interests are in Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Studies, Vietnamese diaspora, Asian American communities, and second generation human rights. Aside from his studies, Kertcher is the co-chair of the Asian American Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board at Penn and a facilitator for the Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative.

From Aleppo to Ciudad Juárez to Baghdad, the contemporary world is no stranger to the ghastly effects of ongoing war and armed conflict. While most of the international community has fixed their gaze on the ever-growing threat of international terrorism and refugee crises, millions of people feel the pain of wars that have long since past. The means of warfare have undoubtedly evolved, and weaponry has come and gone, but weapons of bygone conflicts continue to be used, perhaps even inadvertently. Throughout Southeast Asia in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the remnants of warfare and weaponry are still alive today and destroy the livelihood of thousands of people. The Second Indochina War was a conflict of critical importance for the future of international relations and the lives of billions of people throughout the world who still feel the reverberations today. Atrocities were committed by many of the belligerents in the conflict: the North Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese, the Americans, the South Koreans, and more. However, the kind of indiscriminate destruction wrought by the American interveners in Southeast Asia is truly unparalleled in all of military history. Solely in terms of physical means of warfare, the aftermath of American conventional bombing, landmine, and chemical warfare campaigns continue to damage local Southeast Asian populations, foreign veterans, and the environment more than forty years after the conclusion of the Second Indochina War. Toxic chemicals and explosives that once rained down from the sky and mines planted in decades past remain buried, lying in wait for unlucky passersby to treat as enemies. These forgotten, but live explosives and noxious chemicals continue to constitute a significant public health crisis in the afflict-

ed countries.

The war remains highly controversial, with each opposing side seeking to preserve their reputations and avoid culpability for the atrocities they have committed.

For this reason, finding truly objective sources regarding the war in Southeast Asia is exceptionally difficult.

Sources from the U.S. tend to underreport the damage inflicted in the region in order to save face and escape culpability. Sharon Ungerfeld offers an example of this, noting that “studies conducted and funded by the U.S. government had incredible bias and motivation to mask the effects of Agent Orange herbicide.”1 Strikingly, the U.S. government ordered all agencies to “downplay the U.S. role in herbicide operations as much as possible,” passing on the responsibility to the Republic of Vietnam.2 On the other hand, sources from the unified Vietnam tend to overstate the negative effects of American involvement in attempts to demonize the U.S. and accrue international support and funding. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces were “well aware of defoliant plans and planned propaganda exploitation of them.”3 The American government has been quick to deny these propagandized and perhaps embellished Vietnamese reports, and even “dismiss [Western accounts] as partisan left-wing reports” according to Michael Maclear.4 In fact, the U.S. has falsely “insisted that only military targets had been bombed [with conventional weapons].”5 Amidst a wealth of biased sources regarding the war itself, much of the scholarship and research dedicated to the lasting consequences of the Second Indochina War study the effect of dioxin poisoning on American veterans who served in Southeast Asia. A tendency to focus only on the lives and health VOLUME 8 | 56

Kertcher of Americans suggests an imbalance between the valuation of American and Southeast Asian lives, certainly tipped in favor of the Americans. Given this Americentric approach to history, it is critical to study the effects of the conflict in Southeast Asia alongside the effects that it had on Western interveners.

Studies and released government documents have revealed some shocking information and statistics that demonstrate the true horror of the conflict.

An estimated 7.6 millions tons of ordnance, or weapons and ammunition, was released from American aircrafts during the period of U.S. involvement from 1964 to 1973.6 For comparison, 7.6 million tons of ordnance dwarfs the 2.15 million tons of ordnance used

by American forces during the entirety of the Second World War.7 When coupled with landmines and other weapons, the tonnage of American weaponry deployed throughout the Second Indochina War soars to more than 15 million.8 This exorbitant amount of ordnance was divided between Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

According to American military records, U.S. forces unleashed “more than two million tons of ordnance” on Laos alone during the war.9 A report from the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research explains that this amount of ordnance dispersed over the course of nine years translates to “a full B-52 load of ordnance, every eight minutes” over Lao territory.10 The notorious Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was the primary aerial bomber used by the United States to decimate its enemies in Southeast Asia in countless bombing operations. Whether of supply lines, forest cover, military facilities, or infrastructure, the excess American bombing campaigns in the region had the same effect. Among the U.S. military’s most critical bombing operations during the conflict were Rolling Thunder, Barrel Roll, Steel Tiger, Tiger Hound, Menu, and Linebacker I and II.

Operation Rolling Thunder and its associated operations marked the beginning of escalated American intervention in the conflict with the launching of a sustained bombing campaign in North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968. While the U.S. claimed that only “military targets,” like “bridges, rail-lines, port and supply facilities,” were deliberately attacked, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and many of the urban centers south of Hanoi were reduced to rubble beneath the estimated 655,000 tons of ordnance that rained down 57 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

during the operation.11 Maclear recounts the horror of the American operation: “...there remained only ghost towns from the nightmare of Rolling Thunder. Across the whole landscape… not a single habitable brick edifice could be seen… just so many heaps of rubble.”12 Rolling Thunder was later supplemented by additional sustained bombing campaigns in the North with even more devastating effects. Operation Linebacker and Linebacker II each occurred in 1972, nearly at the end of U.S. involvement in the conflict. Linebacker II, colloquially known as the “Christmas bombings” for occurring in December, was intended by American strategists to force a cessation of conflict through brute force, meaning that a shocking 3,420 sorties released their payloads of conventional explosives on the Northern urban centers of Hanoi and Hai Phong over a 12-day period.13 The brutal bombing campaign, which indiscriminately hit both military and civilian targets, was condemned internationally for its barbarism by the United Nations, Pope Paul VI, and major international newspapers.14 In a later statement, former Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.N. Ha Van Lau decried the bombing campaign, saying that the 12-day air raid was the “equivalent of five atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.”15 Operation Linebacker II was ultimately deemed ineffective for failing to accomplish its objectives and drawing wave after wave of international condemnations, spelling out the end of American intervention in the Second Indochina War.16

Meanwhile, covert American Operations Barrel Roll, Steel Tiger, and Tiger Hound ravaged Laos and Operation Menu pummeled Viet Cong targets in Cambodia. The operations in Laos were interdictive American bombing campaigns that struck at non-battlefield targets like the elusive Ho Chi Minh, or Truong Son, Trail for the entirety of the conflict.17 The Ho Chi Minh Trail served as the primary logistical and supply route between North Vietnam and the communist revolutionaries in the south, snaking through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.18 Countless American and South Vietnamese campaigns were launched in order to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a critical factor in the decisive North Vietnamese victory in the conflict, to no avail. In Cambodia, the strategic bombing campaign codenamed Operation Menu performed surgical strikes―often in proximity to civilian targets―to obliterate alleged Viet

Second Indochina Conflict Cong strongholds, amounting to more than “quadruple the tonnage [of conventional explosives] dropped on Japan in World War II.”19 The massive campaign was divided among Operations Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Supper, and Dessert. These absurd bombing campaigns that violated the neutrality of both Laos and Cambodia were complete military and humanitarian failures at the cost of “hundreds of thousands of casualties” of both civilians and combatants that continue to claim lives to this day.20 In fact, Xiengkhouang Province in northeastern Laos was the most heavily bombed area in the country; in total, the amount of ordnance expended in the country was the equivalent of “two tons of explosives for every man, woman, and child.”21 However, like in any war, conflict tends to be centralized and frequent in specific locations.

In Vietnam, the most fiercely contested battleground was Quang Tri Province of South Vietnam, bordering the demilitarized zone with North Vietnam.22 As a border province, Quang Tri was the site of ceaselessly fierce combat between communist forces and allied U.S.-South Vietnamese forces, as troops from North Vietnam and local insurgents regularly invaded the South Vietnamese territory. In Quang Tri, the American forces carried out considerable bombing campaigns to drive out the communists, leaving only 11 of 3,500 villages in the province intact as it was “bombed flat” throughout the conflict.23 According to The New Yorker, “no other part of the country suffered more grievously” as more conventional explosives were unleashed on this single Vietnamese province than were “dropped on all of Germany during the Second World War.”24 Disturbingly, it has been estimated that around 10% of American ordnance expended during the conflicted failed to detonate and are thus considered unexploded ordnances, or UXO.25 Ordnance can fail to detonate for any number of reasons, including faulty production, improper usage, and environmental conditions.26 The Vietnamese government reports that UXOs contaminate “approximately one-fifth of its land, with the central provinces suffering from the worst contamination.”27 In Quang Tri alone, more than half of all land remains contaminated by UXOs.28 Throughout all of Laos, 25% of villages reported that their land was contaminated

by UXOs.29 The scourge of UXOs in Southeast Asia is compounded by the presence of countless landmines

that litter the landscape, even several decades after their placement.

American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese forces laid approximately 3.5 million landmines throughout Southeast Asia during the conflict, concentrated around the highly contested central provinces, like Quang Tri.30 Additionally, landmines were widely used during the Cambodian Civil War following the conclusion of the Second Indochina War, causing a heavy concentration of active landmines in the country.31 Despite this, it is estimated that between 90% and 97% of UXOs in Vietnam and Laos are not landmines, instead consisting primarily of various forms of conventional, unexploded ordnance like cluster bombs, grenades, and shells.32 While landmines and other forms of UXOs both detonate upon interaction with innocent civilians far after they were intended to, they function differently and were used for different purposes.

Much of the weaponry that comprises UXOs in Southeast Asia were anti-personnel explosives in the form of cluster bombs released from the air that subsequently released hundreds of explosive submunitions.33 These submunitions, most commonly Bomb Live Unit 26 or 24, can have a “toy-like” appearance, but spray deadly shrapnel upon detonation that are designed to incapacitate or kill.34 Landmines, on the other hand, were designed for land denial and the hindrance of enemy forces, as well as tying up significant enemy resources by being difficult to clear from the battleground and causing injuries and mass amputations that require complex medical attention.35 Because of the inhumanity and indiscriminate cruelty of both cluster munitions and landmines, weapons intended to maximize the pain and suffering of their victims, more than one hundred states―excluding the U.S.―have banned both weapons under the legally-binding Convention on Cluster Munitions and Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction.36

Regardless of international bans and outrage, upwards of 60,000 Vietnamese people have been killed

by UXOs, while countless more have been injured.37 Every year, more and more UXOs are unearthed by floods, waiting for more victims to claim.38 These victims are overwhelmingly residents of rural areas who rely on agriculture for survival; of these victims, most VOLUME 8 | 58

Kertcher tended to be adult males or younger children.39 Adult males were more likely to be victims of UXO accidents due to their involvement in activities like farming, collecting scrap metal to re-sell, and tending to animals,40 resulting in a destroyed family structure as the primary provider is incapacitated and directs finances for medical care, or other family members are unable to work or go to school.41 The circumstances are dire as poverty-stricken populations risk their lives to provide for their families by knowingly working in dangerous areas contaminated by UXOs.42 Furthermore, the presence of UXOs prevents people from productively using farmland or expanding settlements; placing a significant burden on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia’s abilities to feed their growing populations.43 In Cambodia, the inability to use significant tracts of farmland due to UXO contamination leads to mass migration to urban centers that cannot reasonably accommodate them, resulting in significant overcrowding and waste disposal and sanitation issues.44 Sources indicate that landmines, and other UXOs to a lesser extent, are the “single biggest factor hindering the development of Cambodia.”45 In fact, Masahiro Morikawa estimates that agricultural production increases up to 150% if there are no landmines in a country after the end of a conflict.46 Given the perceived benefits of a UXO-free landscape and the acknowledgment of the safety risk that UXOs present to civilians, a number of alleviation efforts have been undertaken with varying degrees of success.

Immediately following the unification of Vietnam and the conclusion of the Second Indochina War, the communist regime undertook significant campaigns to clear minefields and UXOs. The unified government imprisoned vast amounts of people affiliated with South Vietnam and the U.S. in re-education camps, which were often centers for forced labor. Firsthand accounts from South Vietnamese veteran of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Nguyen Cong Luan, describe inmates being subject to “unlimited terms in forced labor projects” like mine and UXO clearance activities to the point of physical exhaustion.47 Other localized mine clearance efforts in Cambodia utilize an “extremely tedious, time-consuming, and hazardous method” known as prodding to alleviate the burden caused by more than 2 million active mines remaining in the country.48 The cost of clearing a single mine or other UXO can be 59 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

up to $1,000, resulting in the discontinuation of many “systematic clearance” efforts that were developed by affected governments due to a lack of resources.49 As resources in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia dwindle, international organizations, foreign states, and various non-governmental organizations have taken the lead in clearing UXOs. Perhaps the most prominent international NGO involved with UXO clearance is the Mines Advisory Group (MAG),50 which has carried out significant clearance operations in Quang Tri and Quang Binh Provinces, Vietnam and Xiengkhouang Province, Laos.51 In Xiengkhouang, MAG destroyed more than 20,000 UXOs throughout 1996.52 MAG made similar progress in Quang Tri and Quang Binh, clearing nearly 41 acres of contaminated land after detonating and disposing of nearly 18,000 UXOs in 2013 alone.53 Meanwhile, MAG and other organizations interested in mitigating the issue of UXO contamination alongside Project RENEW and Clear Path International pursue less expensive and resource intensive efforts, like awareness education and programs designed to train locals to safely remove UXOs.54

The ultimate message of awareness education programs is encouraging locals to refrain from uncovering, touching, and tampering with UXOs while avoiding areas known to be contaminated with UXOs.55 A number of cost-effective programs for mine and other UXO education and awareness have been developed in Southeast Asia through groups like the Mine Awareness Training Team, MAG, and the Cambodian Mine Action Center.56 Other programs aim to educate and train indigenous Southeast Asians to clear UXOs independently, effectively putting agency and power back into the hands of those directly affected by the presence of UXOs.57 For example, the U.S. allocated $20 million from 1994 to 1995 for “humanitarian clearance of landmines” in Cambodia, focusing on mine awareness, education, and clearance training programs so that locals can become self-sufficient in clearance operations.58 The U.S. has continued to support demining and UXO clearance operations, with President Bill Clinton vowing that “[Vietnam] will have America’s support until [they] have found every landmine and every piece of unexploded ordnance. This is a tragedy for which peace produces no answer.”59 To this end, the U.S. allocated $3.1 million in 2000 for UXO clearance

Second Indochina Conflict efforts ranging from equipment purchases to computer systems in Vietnam.60 However, the paltry funds that the U.S. has contributed to UXO clearance in Southeast Asia are not nearly enough. The morally reprehensible use of weaponry during the war must be compensated for in some manner by every side responsible. Human rights researcher and advocate Eric Stover calls upon the international community to help these impoverished Southeast Asian nations develop mine clearing technologies and fund operations “at minimum.”61 Andrew Wells-Dang of Oxfam in Vietnam decries the U.S. government and representative NGOs for their minimal level of support for clearance efforts and compensation “given that the vast majority of remaining lethal ordnance is of U.S. origin” in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.62 Wells-Dang recommends a range of measures to alleviate the pain of UXOs given a lack of international and American support including risk-reduction objectives, monitoring and reporting systems for incidents, and mine-risk education programs.63 Ideally, the U.S. would provide significant labor and funds to dispose of UXOs due to their liability. Without efforts for resolution, the innumerable UXOs left behind by the U.S. can continue to detonate at will, shaking the earth and potentially releasing lethal chemicals that have laid dormant beneath the soil.64

These chemicals are the remnants of Operation Ranch Hand, a decade-long chemical warfare campaign waged by the U.S. military on both communist Vietnamese forces and the Southeast Asian landscape beginning with President John F. Kennedy’s controversial authorization of the operation in 1962.65 The objectives of the joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operation were to “defoliate forests and mangroves, to clear perimeters of military installations and to destroy ‘unfriendly crops’ as a tactic for decreasing enemy food supplies,” otherwise known as crop destruction or food denial.66 Similar to the international bans on cluster munitions and landmines, more than 170 states―excluding the U.S.―have agreed to Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, which contains an article banning the deliberate destruction of food, water, and other things necessary for human survival. The chemicals used to fulfill these objectives were commonly known as the Rainbow Herbicides, a collection of herbicidal substances with differing purposes and chemical makeups developed by

Dow Chemical Corporation and Monsanto Company.67 Throughout the course of the operation, 72 million liters of Rainbow Herbicides were showered over Southeast Asia by more than 19,000 sorties,68 primarily over “3.6 million hectares of forest and villages in Central and Southern Vietnam.”69 Of the Rainbow Herbicides, Agent Orange was by far the most widely used, making up “roughly two-thirds” of herbicides used during the war.70 Used widely for both crop destruction and leveling forest cover, Agent Orange is a compound comprised of one part 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and one part 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), with the latter being commonly contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, commonly referred to as just dioxin.71 According to Le Thi Nham Tuyet of the Research Center for Gender, Family, and Environment in Development, “dioxin is described as the most toxic substance discovered by mankind to date,”72 which is a frightening concept given that an estimated 18 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to it and hundreds of thousands were otherwise affected.73 Contrastingly, American servicemen lacked “significant exposure” to dioxin due to U.S. military protocols ensuring they were not present in areas targeted by Operation Ranch Hand.74 Given American servicemen’s lack of significant exposure to poisonous dioxin chemicals, the wide body of research on the effects of dioxin poisoning on American veterans of the Second Indochina Conflict, rather than on the actual victims and targets of Operation Ranch Hand, reflects an Americentric research bias in the academy.

The horrific effects of dioxin poisoning on humans has been widely studied, but their results have often been repressed, especially by the U.S. government who has desired to avoid responsibility for the atrocities they committed upon the Vietnamese people during the conflict.75 In fact, use of Agent Orange was banned in 1970 by the U.S. Department of State for its “possible carcinogenic (cancer-producing) and teratogenic (fetus-deforming) properties,” but Operation Ranch Hand continued action.76 Studies by toxicologist Arnold Schecter have shown that exposure to dioxin “can cause an increased risk of cancer, immune deficiencies, reproductive and developmental changes, nervous system damage, liver injury, elevated blood lipids, skin damage, and death.”77 Observed congenital VOLUME 8 | 60

Kertcher malformations resulting from dioxin exposure include spina bifida, anencephalus, conjoined twins, cleft lip and palate, and various other anomalies ranging in severity.78 Children with birth defects caused by dioxin, estimated at more than 150,000 since the end of the war, place a significant social and financial burden on impoverished Vietnamese families.79 One mother in a case study by Le expresses feelings of social inferiority due to having disabled daughters, while others empathize with the feelings of stigma and shame arising from not having healthy sons to carry on their lineage.80 Many other families are unable to finance the expensive medical aid necessary to care for children with birth defects, resulting in highly overcrowded Vietnamese orphanages filled with disabled children.81 These children become poisoned by the dioxin remnants of Agent Orange in a number of ways, including contaminated breast milk from mothers,82 conception by poisoned men, and other forms of direct exposure.83 Aside from dioxin being present at birth, many Vietnamese experience elevated levels of dioxin in their bloodstream due to contamination of their food systems.84 Dioxin and other chemicals became buried in the soil from either spraying or spillage during the war, where “it moves up the food chain from phytoplankton to zooplankton, from zooplankton to fish, and then into humans” who transfer it through breastfeeding and reproduction, effectively contaminating the entirety of the ecosystem.85 Additional environmental effects of dioxin poisoning arising from spray drift, improper storage, and spillage at U.S. military bases in the region include “inadvertent defoliation of trees and gardens… in civilian areas.”86

Both Vietnam and the U.S. acknowledge the public health and environmental crises posed by the continued presence of dioxin in Southeast Asia; however, neither country has undertaken significant efforts to resolve the issue. The Vietnamese government offers some financial compensation programs for people who can prove that they have been poisoned with dioxin, but payments amount to a meager maximum of $7.14 per month.87 International NGOs, like the Agent Orange Victims Fund or the Research Centre for Gender, Family, and Environment in Development, focus primarily on accumulating important data on victims for research purposes, “organizing rehabilitation centers and mobilizing support from local to international levels.”88 The 61 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

greatest alleviation efforts come from the U.S., who has “made efforts to clean up dioxin sites and has provided $46 million in general aid for disabled Vietnamese,” but this minimal aid cannot possibly make up for the horrific psychological, environmental, and human effects of chemical warfare for which the U.S. is solely responsible.89 Providing uncontaminated and nutritious food for the people of Vietnam is but one way that the U.S. could contribute more practically.90 Instead, the greatest hope of the tormented Vietnamese people is the natural work of the environment in remedying the poison that the Americans dusted across their country.

Through continued exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, microbial biodegradation, natural drift by wind and water, and the passing of organisms, the poisonous dioxin left behind by the deluge of herbicides can be broken down or removed.91

The American atrocities committed in Southeast Asia over 40 years ago supposedly in support of the Vietnamese people continue to kill, maim, and agonize innocent civilians throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia while simultaneously stunting economic development. From the endless barrage of explosives to the careless scattering of toxic chemicals over the region, these physical means of warfare remain strewn across battlefields and buried beneath the boots of American G.I.s alongside defeated Vietnamese soldiers and massacred innocents. The U.S. has a distinct responsibility in alleviating the pain and suffering they caused in the region, while the current efforts undertaken by the country are undoubtedly insufficient. By failing to be fully accountable for its brutality, perhaps the U.S. is arrogantly suggesting that the Vietnamese people should be grateful that they did not act on their considerations of far more deadly means of warfare whose lasting effects are beyond imagination, like using “tactical nuclear weapons” in defense of Khe Sanh92 or “atomic weapons” as defoliants in place of herbicides.93 As a nation championing the spread of democracy and justice around the globe, the U.S. has failed the people of Southeast Asia, failed to contain communism, and failed to support efforts of reconstruction. The American military’s haphazard abandonment of the Vietnamese people prior to the Fall of Saigon truly did not mark the end of their destruction of Southeast Asia.

Second Indochina Conflict (Endnotes) 1. Sharon Ungerfeld, “The Lingering Killer: Agent Orange,” Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science 2, no. 1 (2014): 134.

2. Paul Frederick Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare: The Ranch Hand Project in Vietnam (New York, NY: Praeger, 1986), 29.

3. Ibid.

4. Maclear Michael, The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam, 1945-1975 (New York, NY: Avon, 1982), 242.

5. Ibid., 247.

6. Edward Miguel and Gerard Roland, “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam,” Journal of Development Economics 96 (2006): 2.

7. Ibid.

8. Phung Kim Tran and Hans Husum, “The Legacy of War: An Epidemiological Study of Cluster Weapon and Land Mines Accidents in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam,” The Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health 43, no. 4 (2012): 1036.

9. Rosy Cave, Anthea Lawson, and Andrew Sherriff, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR: The Humanitarian and Socio-economic Impact (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2006), 23.

10. Ibid.

11. Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 123, 240-41, 247.

12. Ibid., 246.

13. Nguyen T. Lien-Hang, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina, 2016), 295.

14. Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 309.

15. Ibid., 310.

16. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 297.

17. Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 94.

18. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 163.

19. Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 284-85.

20. Ibid., 305.

21. Masahiro Morikawa, Sebastian Taylor, and Marjie Persons, “Deaths and Injuries Due to Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) in Northern Lao PDR (Laos),” Injury 29, no. 4 (1998): 301.

22. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, 163.

23. Miguel, “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam,” 2.

24. George Black, “The Vietnam War is Still Killing

People,” The New Yorker, May 2016.

25. Phung, “The Legacy of War,” 1036.

26. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 24.

27. Sean Sutton, “Vietnam 40 Years After the War,” Journal of ERW and Mine Action 19, no. 1 (2015): 1.

28. Phung, “The Legacy of War,” 1036.

29. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 24.

30. Shawn Roberts and Jody Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 1996), 277.

31. Eric Stover et al., “The Medical and Social Consequences of Land Mines in Cambodia,” JAMA: The Journal of American Medical Association 272, no.

5 (1994): 331.

32. Andrew Wells-Dang, “A Regional Approach: Mine and UXO Risk Reduction in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia,” Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction 9, no. 2 (2005): 1.

33. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 24.

34. Morikawa, “Deaths and Injuries,” 303.

35. Roberts, After the Guns Fall Silent, 4-5.

36. Clyde Haberman, “A Lingering, Deadly Legacy of Wars: Unexploded Bombs,” The New York Times, October 30, 2016, 3.

37. Chris Gilson, “The Deadly Legacy of War in Vietnam,” America, June 3, 2000, 9.

38. Ibid.

39. Phung, “The Legacy of War,” 1038-039.

40. Ibid., 1039.

41. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 32-35.

42. Roberts, After the Guns Fall Silent, 8.

43. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 36-7.

44. Roberts, After the Guns Fall Silent, 179.

45. Ibid., 124.

46. Masahiro Morikawa, “Legacy of the Secret War: Medical Needs in the UXO-Contaminated Areas in Laos,” The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice 11, no. 6 (1998): 485.

47. Nguyen Cong Luan, Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier (Indiana VOLUME 8 | 62

Kertcher UP, 2012), 471, 508.

48. Stover, “The Medical and Social Consequences of Land Mines,” 334.

49. Gilson, “The Deadly Legacy of War in Vietnam,” 10.

50. Sutton, “Vietnam 40 Years After the War,” 1.

51. Rae McGrath, Landmines and Unexploded Ordnance: A Resource Book (London: Pluto, 2000), 23.

52. Ibid., 23.

53. Sutton, “Vietnam 40 Years After the War,” 1.

54. Stacy L. Smith, “U.S. Efforts Strengthen Pledge to Vietnam,” Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction 5, no. 1 (2001): 72-73.

55. Cave, Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR, 34-5.

56. Roberts, After the Guns Fall Silent, 149.

57. Ibid., 144.

58. Ibid.

59. Smith, “U.S. Efforts Strengthen Pledge to Vietnam,” 70.

60. Ibid.

61. Stover, “The Medical and Social Consequences of Land Mines,” 335.

62. Wells-Dang, “A Regional Approach,” 2.

63. Ibid.

64. L. Wayne Dwernychuk et al., “Dioxin Reservoirs in Southern Viet Nam--A Legacy of Agent Orange,” Chemosphere 47, no. 2 (2002): 133.

65. Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare, 26.

66. Jeanne Mager Stellman et al., “The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam,” Nature 422 (2003): 681.

67. Ungerfeld, “The Lingering Killer: Agent Orange,” 128.

68. Thi Nam Tuyet Le and Annika Johnson, “Impact of Chemical Warfare with Agent Orange on Women’s Reproductive Lives in Vietnam: A Pilot Study,” Reproductive Health Matters 9, no. 18 (2001): 156.

69. Alvin L. Young et al., “Environmental Fate and Bioavailability of Agent Orange and Its Associated Dioxin During the Vietnam War,” Environmental Science and Pollution Research 11, no. 6 (2004): 364.

70. Scott Laderman and Edwin A. Martini, Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 213.

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71. Arnold Schecter et al., “Food as a Source of Dioxin Exposure in the Residents of Bien Hoa City, Vietnam,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 45, no. 8 (2003): 781.

72. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 156.

73. Laderman, Four Decades On, 214.

74. Alvin L. Young, Paul F. Cecil, and John F. Guilmartin, “Assessing Possible Exposures of Ground Troops to Agent Orange During the Vietnam War: The Use of Contemporary military records,” Environmental Science and Pollution Research 11, no.

6 (2004): 350.

75. Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare, 160.

76. Ibid., 150.

77. Schecter et al., “Food as a Source of Dioxin Exposure,” 785.

78. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 157.

79. Harrison Jacobs, “These 11 Gut-Wrenching Photos Show America’s Devastating Legacy in Vietnam,” Business Insider, August 5, 2014.

80. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 159-162.

81. Jacobs, “These 11 Gut-Wrenching Photos Show America’s Devastating Legacy in Vietnam.”

82. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 157.

83. Anh D. Ngo et al., “Association Between Agent Orange and Birth Defects: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” International Journal of Epidemiology 35 (2006): 1224.

84. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 157.

85. Arnold Schecter et al., “Recent Dioxin Contamination From Agent Orange in Residents of a Southern Vietnam City,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 43, no. 5 (2001): 437.

86. Stellman et al., “The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange,” 681.

87. Michael G. Palmer, “The Legacy of Agent Orange: Empirical Evidence From Central Vietnam,” Social Science and Medicine 60 (2005): 1067.

88. Le, “Impact of Chemical Warfare,” 158.

89. Jacobs, “These 11 Gut-Wrenching Photos Show America’s Devastating Legacy in Vietnam.”

90. Schecter et al., “Food as a Source of Dioxin Exposure,” 786.

91. Young et al., “Environmental Fate,” 365.

92. Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War, 196.

93. Cecil, Herbicidal Warfare, 49.

Economic Implications

Economic Implications of the Vietnam War for East Asia Shawn Xu

Shawn Xu is a MBA and M.A. student at the Wharton School and Lauder Institute. He is expected to receive his MBA in Entrepreneurship and Finance and his Master of Arts in International Studies in 2019. Previously, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Global Business and Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a minor in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2012. His academic interests are in globalization, startup ecosystems in Asia, and technology adoption in emerging markets.

Though a potentially controversial stance, this paper argues that in order to fully understand the Vietnam War, it is important to consider the positive externalities of the conflict alongside the well-documented social costs. Indeed, the Vietnam War was a bloody, divisive, and costly conflict that ended in an American failure at the height of the Cold War. At the same time, however, one could argue that it also catalyzed the economic transformation of American allies in East Asia.

The macroeconomic effects of the Vietnam War on South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan through aid and special procurement contracts laid the foundation for the rapid economic growth of the region that is now widely known as the “Miracle of East Asia.” This paper sets out to review and summarize the existing literature on these arguments.

Before we dive into the economic history of the Vietnam War and the macroeconomic implications of the conflict on Vietnam’s regional neighbors, it is important to understand the origins of the Vietnam War, the on-going regional developments, and how they played into larger geopolitical developments.

The Vietnam War capped a prolonged period of regional instability and violent conflict in East and Southeast Asia. From the mid-1920s onward, the Empire of Japan had begun an entrenched imperialist policy of aggressive expansionism to increase its own political and military influence on the world stage.

This continued throughout World War II. In September 1940 Japan invaded Vietnam, which was then known as French Indochina and governed by a colonial administration installed by the Vichy French government. The occupation eventually gave way to the establishment of the short-lived pro-Japanese client state, the Empire of Vietnam (March 11 and August 23, 1945).

Following Japan’s World War II defeat in late

1945, Ho Chi Minh, the Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and his Viet Minh nationalist coalition forced then Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate the throne in favor of a newly proclaimed state called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (more colloquially known as North Vietnam) in September 1945. As a contemporary of Minh, Bui Tin attested, this was a time where “patriotism, comradeship, a feeling of national pride, a firm belief in justice…were the sources of happiness for a whole generation of young people.”1 This surge of optimism was rudely interrupted by the French reoccupation of Saigon in the aftermath of the Potsdam Conference. A protracted ten-year civil war – known to the people of Vietnam as the Anti-French Resistance War and known to the Western world as the First Indochina War – followed between French forces supported by Bảo Đại’s Vietnamese National Army and the Viet Minh. Only after the decisive French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a ceasefire agreement signed at Geneva in 1954. As a result of this agreement in Geneva, Vietnam was partitioned into the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the capitalist State of Vietnam in the south.

These regional conflicts were playing out against the backdrop of the Cold War, which had created a state of geopolitical tension between the free-market, capitalist Western bloc and the Communist Eastern bloc. In the intervening years between the end of World War II and the conclusion of the First Indochina War, the East and Southeast Asian region had seen several Cold War developments. The reconstruction of Japan became a national security priority for the United States – as such, Japan became a key United States partner and ally in the region. The Chinese Civil War concluded with a victory for Mao Zedong’s Communist Party and a retreat to the relative safety of Taiwan for ChiVOLUME 8 | 64

Xu ang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Taiwan would later build a constructive alliance with the United States that culminated in the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954. Finally, perhaps most relevant to the topic of this research paper, the Korean War was fought between 1950-1953 and ultimately resulted in an armistice that effectively separated the Korean peninsula between Communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. In sum, East and Southeast Asia were defined by the larger geopolitical tensions present between the Communist forces of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam and key allies of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and South Vietnam.

It is not a stretch to say that the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, became inevitable after the partition of North and South Vietnam.

The United States refused to sign the Geneva Accords, which called for an election to reunify Vietnam two years following the agreement2, and threw its support behind the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. The stakes for preventing the spread of communism were high, especially in the aftermath of the Korean War, and Vietnam became ground zero in this ideological battle.

Roughly 650 military advisors from the United States served in South Vietnam up until the early 1960s. The Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 where the US Navy destroyer USS Maddox clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft escalated American involvement in the region to a military one with US infantry and ground combat troops entering the region. American and South Vietnamese military forces clashed with North Vietnam’s conventional army as well as the Viet Cong, an armed Communist insurgency movement that fought a guerrilla campaign in South Vietnam. At the conflict’s peak in 1968, the United States military had committed 536,000 ground combat troops in its fight against North Vietnam.3

Ultimately, public opinion turned on American political leadership on the issue of intervention in the Vietnam War, and the United States withdrew from the Vietnam conflict in 1972. The Fall of Saigon would occur a few short years after, resulting in the reunification of Vietnam as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under Communist rule in 1976.

This is the more known history of the conflicts in Vietnam, but it is important to lay out the complex 65 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

history of conflicts in the region from the end of WWII to the mid-1970s and acknowledge the terrible loss of life and severe disruption the region experienced. However, the aim of this paper is to also look at an unintended aspect of the war and it is to this, the “East Asian Miracle” that we now turn. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, annual GDP growth rates exceeded 7% per year and experienced widespread industrialization from the 1960s to the 1990s. In the well-documented study, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, the World Bank argues that these conflicts stimulated the export-driven economies of Japan and South Korea.

Specifically, they state: “Perhaps as important, the U.S. military’s extensive purchases in Asia provided a ready market for emerging export industries. Japanese industry received a substantial boost from the provisioning of U.S. troops in Korea, just as some of Korea’s biggest conglomerates got their start selling goods and services to the U.S. military during the war in Vietnam.”4

This critical observation from the World Bank is further supported by the political scientist Seiji Naya.

Even as early as 1971, Naya believed that the Vietnam War yielded an American-led opportunity to create an unrestricted export market for private sector companies in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand.5 This topic is therefore worthy of deeper analysis on a country-by-country basis. This paper provides a brief analysis of the war’s impact on South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Following the Korean War, the South Korean economy was devastated and in need of urgent aid. The economy was dominated by the agricultural sector, and nearly 40% of the population was in a state of absolute poverty in the early 1960s. According to scholar Keunho Park, it was ultimately the Vietnam War that helped pull South Korea out of its protracted recession.6 In 1966, the South Korean and United States governments signed a formal agreement now known as the Brown Memorandum that formalized South Korean military assistance in the Vietnam War conflict in exchange for economic benefits. One of the key American officials

Economic Implications who helped secure passage of this agreement was Walt W. Rostow, an academic who heavily supported the concept of improving economic security in the Third World as a way to bolster the geopolitical security of the United States. In the calculus of the United States government, the Brown Memorandum made sense.

In Ambassador Brown’s report to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, he noted that the arrangement would “have an effect of killing third birds plus alpha with one stone: build up Korean industry, train ROK troops, and strengthen the long-range ties of friendships between our two countries,”7 not to mention help the United States continue to contain communism in the region.

By the end of 1972, South Korea deployed more than 310,000 ground combat troops to Vietnam, more than any other country that was not the United States.

South Korea also sustained more than 90,000 casualties during the war, even more than those sustained by the American military. In return, South Korean companies received special procurement contracts from the United States government that amounted to roughly $1 billion and special trade credits worth an additional $300 million. According to Park, large Korean conglomerates – known as the chaebols – such as Hyundai reaped the largest profits. In one instance, Hyundai enjoyed a monopoly on American special procurement contracts for urban construction, dredging operations, and laundry in South Vietnam that were collectively worth 2.8 billion won. This initial set of profits were used by Hyundai to provide the seed capital necessary to start Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Heavy Industries, subsidiaries of Hyundai that were critical for South Korea’s later phases of rapid economic growth.8 These benefits allowed South Korea’s GNP per capita to improve from $103 per capita in the early 1960s to $319 per capita in 1972.

Taiwan was one of the first countries to answer the American call for the development of the Free World Military Assistance Force in Vietnam, or America’s request for military assistance in Vietnam from its allies. Taiwan originally committed an entire division of troops to deploy in Vietnam for many of the same motivations for economic influence outlined above for South Korea. However, Keunho Park argues that the United States ultimately blocked this deployment of Taiwanese troops due to anti-Chinese sentiment among

the South Vietnamese public and due to concerns that it might draw in China into the conflict.9

Even so, Taiwan continued to economically benefit from the Vietnam War through exports to the South Vietnamese economy. As Naya points out, roughly 75% of chemical fertilizer exports and 85% of cement exports from Taiwan were delivered to the South Vietnamese market in the 1960s.10 Granted, these industries were nascent in Taiwan at the time, but Vietnam served as a key customer for these two emergent Taiwanese industries and fostered their growth.

Finally, the involvement of Japan in the Vietnam War is worth examination. Ando’s research suggests that Japan received up to $900 million per year in annual special procurement contracts from the United States in the late 1960s11 Moreover, Park maps out how Japan became an integral part of a supply chain between itself, South Korea, and the United States military during the course of the Vietnam War. For instance, the US military sourced all its uniforms and shoes from South Korean manufacturers, which in turn sourced its raw materials for these value-added goods from Japan.12 Indeed, this bulletin from the Japan Tariff Association seems to foreshadow the export-led boon that the Vietnam War had given to Japan.

“Vietnam-related procurement is bringing larger amount of orders to Korea and Taiwan rather than Japan. Just as Japan received a large amount of war-related procurement during the Korea War, Korea and Taiwan are receiving the majority of orders from Vietnam-related procurement at present… Because of this, Japan’s exports to Korea have significantly increased recently. As long as Vietnam-related procurement lasts, Japan’s exports to Korea and Taiwan are expected to sharply increase.”13

This relationship perhaps served as the foundation for the significant trade relationship that would be fostered between Japan and South Korea in the latter half of the 20th century.

In conclusion, the Vietnam War had an outsized economic impact on Vietnam’s neighbors in the region.

Primarily, this economic impact was driven by a stimulus for South Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese exports led by United States economic policy. This was espeVOLUME 8 | 66

Xu cially clear in South Korea, where the Brown Memorandum secured assistance from South Korean troops in the Vietnam theater for massive special procurement contracts for the Korean chaebols that provided the initial funding for heavy industry. Taiwan and Japan both benefitted as well through large export booms in industries such as chemicals, cement, and raw materials.

Indeed, Japan’s increased trading activity with South Korea could have helped normalize their relationships starting in the 1960s. Had the Vietnam War not occurred, these economies might not have had the kind of stimulus needed to propel their growth to the levels that led to them being recognized as economic miracles. The Vietnam War, as bloody and costly as it was, clearly had unintended repercussions outside Vietnam and boosted the private sector fortunes of these three nations.

(Endnotes) 1. Bui Tin. Following Ho Chi Minh. 2nd Edition. (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1995): 6.

2. Kiyoko Imura. “Betonamu Sensou to Koudo Seichou no Saigenn Hatan (The Vietnam War and The Economic Development in Japan),” Mita Gakkai Zasshi (Mita Journal of Economics), The Keio Economic Society, 81, no. 3 (in Japanese) (1988): 20.

3. Bureau of Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States. Department of the Treasury, U.S.A, (1975): 325.

4. World Bank. The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy. Oxford University Press (1993): 80.

5. Seiji Naya. “The Vietnam War and Some Aspects of Its Economic Impact on Asian Countries,” The Developing Economies, 9, no. 7 (March 1971): 40.

6. Keunho Park. Korean Economic Development and Vietnam War (Kankoku no Keizai Hatten to Betonamu Sensou), translated from Japanese. Ochanomizu Shobou (1993): 15.

7. Cable 1966 8. Keunho Park. Korean Economic Development and Vietnam War (Kankoku no Keizai Hatten to Betonamu Sensou), translated from Japanese. Ochanomizu Shobou (1993): 55.

9. Keunho Park. “The Vietnam War and the ‘Mira67 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

cle of East Asia’”, Translated by Hiroko Kwasakiya Clayton. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 4, no. 3 (2003): 10.

10. Seiji Naya. “The Vietnam War and Some Aspects of Its Economic Impact on Asian Countries,” The Developing Economies, 9, no. 7 (March 1971): 45.

11. Shinzo Ando. Betonamu Tokujyu (Vietnam Special Procurement), translated from Japanese. San-ichi Publishing Co., Ltd. (1967): 51.

12. Keunho Park. Korean Economic Development and Vietnam War (Kankoku no Keizai Hatten to Betonamu Sensou), translated from Japanese. Ochanomizu Shobou (1993): 70.

13. Japan Tariff Association. (1966): 39

Sinitic Languages

Avoiding Loss through Curation: An Examination of the Trajectory of Sinitic Languages in Singapore Ben Roth Ben Roth is a first-year MBA/MA student at the Wharton School and the Lauder Institute. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Yale University in 2010. His main academic interests are Chinese political philosophy, international development policy, and international environmental policy. Roth was inspired to write this article during a research trip to Singapore as part of his studies with the Lauder Institute in July 2017, and conversations with his wife’s Singaporean family informed his work.

Singapore offers an unparalleled opportunity to study how multiple languages interact with each other and evolve over time. A small city-state with a thriving multicultural society comprised primarily of Chinese, Malay, and Indian ethnic communities, Singapore is also home to an incredible diversity of Sinitic languages. Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, Fuzhou, Hainanese, Shanghainese, and other Chinese topolects can still be found throughout the city today, the result of generations of immigration from mainland China.1 After decades of government policy and social preferences have cemented the use of English and Mandarin over other topolects, the Singaporean Chinese community is beginning to grapple with the distinct possibility that in the near future it may not be possible to encounter Sinitic languages other than Mandarin in Singapore.

The forces that cause language shift and that determine language inheritance in a society are numerous and complex, and Singapore is certainly no exception.

Singapore’s varied Chinese language speaking communities, population density, and government-mandated language policies provide an interesting lens through which to examine some of the forces that shaped Chinese language usage over time. Furthermore, as language can be a strong vehicle for cultural transmission, it is instructive to examine the ways in which language, personal identity, and culture have interacted to shape current attitudes towards language use in Singapore today. Over the course of conducting research for this paper, it became clear that while in recent years there has been renewed interest in Chinese topolects in Sin-

gapore for heritage and cultural reasons, Mandarin and English are so fully implanted in the habits of the younger generation that it is difficult to see a plurality Chinese topolects ever again thriving in the country.

This paper further argues that various Chinese topolects such as Hokkien, Fuzhou, and Cantonese have entered into a “curated” stage, in which they are regarded with respect for their heritage value by Chinese communities and enjoy limited preservation through cultural groups dedicated to learning ancestral languages, but for all intents and purposes, the languages have ceased to exist in natural, self-sustaining forms. In order to understand whether or not this fate is sealed, the paper will first present a brief history of Chinese languages in Singapore, describe the various forces that affected and shaped their usage over time, and finally assess the present-day attitudes of Chinese Singaporeans towards the current Sinitic language environment and expectations for the future.

Formation of Singapore’s Chinese Language Environment

Before Singapore was founded as a British colony in 1819, it was a sleepy fishing village of several hundred people. With no natural resources and an unforgiving tropical climate, Singapore’s early existence was made possible by its fortuitous geographic location that placed it at a strategic crossroads for trade from Europe to East Asia. Because the Dutch and Portuguese had already taken strategic port positions in Batavia (known today as Jakarta) and Melaka, respectively, the British VOLUME 8 | 68

Roth sought to acquire an unclaimed deep-water port in the vicinity and settled on Singapore. By 1860, the population had grown to roughly 80,000, more than half of which were ethnic Chinese who had come to Singapore from Malaysia and mainland China for economic opportunity.2 Immigrants from across the Malaysian and Indonesian archipelagos, India and the Middle East had also come to settle and to benefit from the rapid early growth fostered by the British colonial administration.

Singapore’s multicultural and multilingual social fabric was weaved together during its very earliest days.

Due to civil unrest in mainland China from major nineteenth-century conflicts like the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion, in addition to the allure of better livelihoods abroad, Chinese immigration to Singapore exploded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 However, because many of the migrants originated from different provinces in China and spoke mutually unintelligible languages, tensions existed from the early days among Chinese language groups in Singapore. For instance, in 1876 the colonial government sought to improve the quality of postal and remittance services among all of the Chinese population groups in Singapore, which hitherto was privately run by a powerful clan of the Teochew community. Because the Teochew clan saw this as an affront to their business, the opening of a government-run post office in Chinatown set off a riot that damaged the newly-opened post office and forced it to relocate to a different part of town.4

A second example is the proliferation of “secret societies” that emerged in Singapore during its early history. The British authorities were concerned that these groups, which claimed honorable purposes but also acted as shadow governments for their associated Chinese communities and engaged in illicit activities, were undermining the fragile social order of the city.

Indeed, because there were so many different languages spoken, colonial law enforcement officials found it difficult to investigate the groups. A British official named William Pickering is believed to have been the first British colonial government official to competently speak a Chinese language, in this case, Hokkien, in Singapore. When he arrived in 1872, he sought to infiltrate the “secret societies” to understand the ways in which the government might more effectively control them.

Pickering’s pivotal moment came in 1877 when 69 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

he exposed an attempted mass kidnapping of newly-arrived Chinese laborers by one of the Chinese secret societies. The government used the incident as an excuse to set up an official “Chinese Protectorate Bureau,” which sought to protect vulnerable Chinese immigrant groups from the powerful societies.5 These events serve as examples of how problems among fragmented language communities in the Chinese population in early Singapore provided historical context for future government policies that would seek to defragment the language communities and create unity through a common mutual tongue.

Due to the British colonial administration, English was the de-facto lingua franca among the empowered classes in Singapore since its founding, but as English language instruction was not widespread, many ethnic groups were nonetheless unable to communicate amongst each other. By 1957, over 33 distinct mother tongue language groups had formed in Singapore, 20 of which had more than one thousand native speakers.6 In the early 1900s, the government attempted to actively increase the number of secondary schools that taught in English, but they were not obligatory and many communities preferred to send children to ethnic schools.7 Chinese schools and Islamic madrasas filled an educational vacuum in late nineteenth century Singapore. The fragile balance between the colonial government and the Chinese community in Singapore was again disrupted with the fall of the Qing Empire and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. Many Singaporean Chinese felt a strong sense of duty to the new government in China and believed that status as British colonial subjects in Singapore was beginning to offer diminishing returns.8 When Mandarin was chosen as the national language of the Republic of China in 1917, most Chinese schools in Singapore also adopted the practice, even though the colonial government made no such mandate. Chinese schools in Singapore followed the mainland when textbooks written in Classical Chinese were replaced by textbooks written in colloquial Chinese.9 The importance of Chinese language schools in the transmission of Chinese culture should not be underestimated, and indeed, Lee Guan Kin of Singapore Nanyang University claims that during this period “in both theory and in reality, Chinese schools were the most important locale of cultural transmittance.”10

Sinitic Languages

However, even with the attempt to standardize language across Singapore’s Chinese schools, many Chinese Singaporean communities remained compartmentalized until the second half of the twentieth century when both the colonial government and the Republic of Singapore’s language policies began to take effect.

The colonial government’s education policy after World War II and prior to independence in 1965 sought to promote English language usage to foment social unity.

Noting the significant decline of Chinese schools, Lee Guan Kin writes, “Between 1946 and 1954, enrollment for Chinese schools that originally surpassed that of the English schools by 30 percent, fell drastically to 1.5 percent lower than the English schools.”11 While this may seem due to the English language preference of the British government, Lee notes that the trend continued after the establishment of the Republic of Singapore as well. Highlighting some of the cultural implications of the dominance of English in Singapore before and after the colonial period, Lee writes: “During the colonial period, the colonial rulers made English the language of administration, business, education, and so on, leaving the mother tongues and cultures of the various races to their own fates. To the ethnic Chinese, the vibrancy of the Chinese schools ensured the continuity and development of their culture. After independence, the usage domain of the English language was widened even more with the incoming of a pragmatic government. As a result, the status of the English language was elevated even higher in independent Singapore than during the colonial period, while the mother tongues of the three main races were rendered second languages. As a consequence, a problem of inheritance was created for the cultures transmitted via these languages.”12

The pragmatism that Lee references was epitomized in 1966 when a policy of bilingualism was adopted that required that all students in Singapore learn English in addition to one of the other three national languages, usually that most closely related to their ethnic group.13 By 1984, the government announced a plan that Chinese, Malay, Indian and English language education would be compressed into a single, English-dom-

inant curriculum.14 English was widely perceived to be important economically, but today the notion that English is essential to Singapore’s competitiveness is changing as the economic rise of the People’s Republic of China has reshaped global trade, investment, and diplomacy. It is plausible that English proficiency is no longer critical to success for a Singaporean. That said, as early as 1985 the Singaporean government promoted the use of Mandarin for its economic practicality rather than for creating unity within the Singaporean Chinese community.15 The Bilingual Policy was crafted to take advantage not only of the economic value of English but also of Mandarin.

Before this policy, Singaporean Chinese communities continued to be segregated along linguistic fault lines. In a recent interview, Sofield Chao Künzi recounted the linguistic divisions she experienced as a child and young adult in the early years of the Republic of Singapore. Born in 1955 to a Singaporean Chinese family, Sofield’s parents immigrated from outside of Fuzhou. She speaks a variant of the Fuzhou topolect as her native language. Sofield described how most Chinese language communities would cluster together and that most economic activity and everyday needs could be met through speaking one of the main dialect groups.

However, there was some linguistic mixing. For instance, Sofield’s family lived in Chang-I district, which she recalls at the time was a primarily Hokkien speaking district with some Teochew and Cantonese speakers as well. Because the Fuzhou topolect has a relatively small number of total speakers, she noted that her family learned to speak the dominant topolects varieties as well. By the time Sofield left Singapore in 1978, she was able to fluently speak Fuzhou, Hokkien, Teochew, Malay, and English. She notes that even by the time she left, English was rarely spoken among the Chinese Singaporean community. While Sofield expressed that maintaining the Fuzhou dialect is an important part of cultural transmission, she also indicated that the economic advantage of speaking Mandarin outweighs the sentimental or heritage value of continued dialect usage. A second interview conducted in Mandarin with Sofield’s 94-year-old mother, Jingru (Sylvia) Li-Chao, revealed that the even among the elder generation in Singapore, the adoption of Mandarin as a standard language among the Chinese Singaporean community was VOLUME 8 | 70

Roth seen by some in a positive light. Sylvia recalled that during the 1950s, the acquisition of multiple languages was normal in the Singaporean Chinese community, and while daily life unfolded relatively seamlessly, even widespread multilingualism was not enough to overcome language barriers among many Chinese language groups. Sylvia further described how post-independence that the use of Mandarin came to be seen as a way to unify the nation, and during this period many people in her generation embraced the pragmatism of adopting Mandarin as the common language.16

This degree of multilingualism of Sofield and Sylvia is notable because one of the common justifications for Chinese language standardization in Singapore was that learning many languages is a burden on society, especially young children. Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister and most influential modern political figure, originally believed not only that learning dialects was a waste of mental space, but also that the ability to speak English proficiently separated Singapore from the rest of the East Asian cultural sphere by providing a significant comparative economic advantage. Charlene Tan of the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore writes, “[Lee Kwan Yew] pointed out that Singapore Chinese who only know Mandarin are ‘of little value to China and the Chinese’ since China already has 1.3 billion of them. What the Chinese in China find useful are Singapore Chinese who are bilingual and bicultural: ‘Because we are English-speaking. Because we have English connections with the English-speaking world...that’s our value-add.’”17 It is reasonable to believe that this pragmatic thinking was the impetus in Lee Kwan Yew’s mind to implement the Speak Mandarin Campaign, which would not only ensure the ability of Singapore to transact economically with China but would also facilitate the ability of the Singaporean population to speak English. Lee Kwan Yew’s language policies would come to radically transform Singapore’s Chinese language communities, and none more so than the Speak Mandarin Campaign.

The Speak Mandarin Campaign was implemented in 1979 as a response to a government study, known as the Goh Report, that showed that the Bilingual Policy was not having the desired effect and failed to simultaneously improve Mandarin and English literacy rates.18 Government officials concluded that the continued use 71 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

of dialects in the household overburdened children and that the only viable way of achieving bilingual education would be for the Singaporean Chinese community to adopt Mandarin as the standard language spoken at home in addition to school. The Speak Mandarin campaign was extraordinarily effective in changing the linguistic habits of the Singaporean Chinese community.

A Ministry of Education survey shows that Mandarin as a household language had increased from 26 percent to 64.7 percent from 1980 to 1992, while the use of the dialects at home had decreased from 64.4 percent to 3.6 percent.19 The implementation of the Speak Mandarin Campaign was not without controversy, however. The government used harsh language to communicate the rationale behind the campaign, describing dialects as “vulgar, divisive, and having no value either culturally or economically.”20 Many in the Chinese community inevitably resisted the implementation and what they viewed as heavy-handed government intervention. For instance, students starting school in Singapore were required to be registered under the Hanyu Pinyin transcription of their names, even if their official birth certificates, in English, listed a different spelling chosen by the parents. However, this requirement was officially removed in 1991.21

The Speak Mandarin Campaign is the most explicit example that demonstrates how the government sought to suppress the use of various Chinese topolects in Singapore. The impact of the campaign has significant, ongoing effects upon today’s language environment in Singapore. Given the far-reaching implications of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, it is useful to consider whether or not the government’s reasoning behind the Speak Mandarin Campaign was justified. While the government argued that a common language was necessary for education and that speaking of dialects at home prevented students from successfully following the Bilingual Policy, some scholars have pointed out that this belief is not rooted in rigorous scientific analysis. Rejecting the government supported notion that successful acquisition of both English and Mandarin is hindered by speaking topolects at home, John Newman of the Darling Down Institute of Advanced Education in Australia writes, “There is not even any hint of the possibility that success in language learning may be dependent in part upon the attitude the learner has to

Sinitic Languages the language, the associated culture, and the motivation the learner brings to the language-learning task…. there is no acknowledgement [by the government] that Singaporeans may sometimes use dialects because they like to use dialect or because dialects makes them feel more relaxed.”22 There are many potentially confounding variables in the Singaporean’s government analysis behind the Speak Mandarin Campaign, and the simple idea that creating a clear, dichotomous English-Mandarin language environment for students free from the interference of family dialects was perhaps not altogether a scientifically sound method. Indeed, it is likely that when the government implemented the Speak Mandarin Campaign, it did not anticipate the extent to which modern Singaporean society would continue to grapple with the pros and cons of abandoning different topolects for two languages, English and Mandarin, which are historically nonnative for most of the Singaporean Chinese community.

It is clear that socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces were significant in creating mechanisms that permitted a variety of Chinese languages to thrive in Singapore. Government policy, while varying in aims across the colonial to the independent governments, also has given rise to the domination of Mandarin as the preferred Chinese language in the Singaporean Chinese community. The next section of the paper explores how these forces have combined to result in the present state of Sinitic language communities in Singapore.

The Current State of Sinitic Languages in Singapore

The landscape of Chinese topolects in Singapore has vastly changed from the days when different Chinese language communities thrived across the island nation. Today, if one wants to experience a Chinese multilingual environment in public, one of the only places to do so is in one of Singapore’s famous hawker centers – public centers with small food stalls offering a variety of different ethnic cuisines – and observe the conversations taking place among workers inside a particular food stall, offering staples from regions like Hainan, Guangdong, or Taiwan.

The effects of government policy have clearly had a massive impact on the language environment of Singapore, and it is plausible to believe that languages like

Hokkien, Teochew, and Fuzhou do not have a sufficient number of active, young speakers to maintain viable language transmission across generations. Data from the 2011 Singapore government census shows that in the recent period between 2000-2010, use of dialects as the primary language at home has continued to drop, from 30.7% in 2000 to 19.2% in 2010.23

As the trend continues downward, a number of important questions regarding the cultural value that Chinese topolects have and will continue to play must be asked. Is it possible for Mandarin to replace the original topolects without loss of cultural information? Are there any inherent cultural values that Teochew, Hokkien, and Fuzhou are capable of transmitting that Mandarin is not? While under different demographic and historical circumstances we might expect that Chinese topolects would disappear entirely, the cultural value of the languages is such that it is plausible to think that Singaporeans will strive to ensure that there are cultural centers and resources that will permit the languages to exist in an artificial, curated form that requires active upkeep from the population, but for all intents and purposes have been relegated to exist as mere artefacts.

There are other signs to support the notion that Chinese topolects in Singapore will not disappear entirely, and that as more of the younger generation recognizes the consequences of the languages going extinct, more people will strive to preserve certain aspects of the language. Highlighting this possibility, an article published in August 2017 by The New York Times suggests that Chinese topolects in Singapore are even enjoying a modest revival as Singaporeans recognize that the slow demise of the topolects has led to a generational disconnect in which grandchildren and grandparents are unable to communicate with each other. The article states that this phenomenon has led to renewed social tensions as Singaporeans reject the ongoing government restrictions through language policies such as the Speak Mandarin Campaign, and a ban on dialect television programming. Arguing that recent public sentiment has led to a change in language policy, The New York Times reporter Ian Johnson writes, “This linguistic repression, and the consequences for multigenerational families, has led to a widespread sense of resentment – and now a softening in the government’s policy. For the first time since the late 1970s, a television series VOLUME 8 | 72

Roth was recently broadcast in Hokkien…many young people are also beginning to study dialects on their own, hoping to reconnect with their past, or their grandparents.”24 A modest revival of interest in family dialects in Singapore does not mean that the languages are capable of sustaining themselves naturally, however, and it seems reasonable to think that renewed attention is but a symptom of the latter stages of decline of heritage language use in a developed, prosperous society like Singapore.

A closer examination of the government’s loosening of broadcast restrictions also reveals that the move is aimed less at stimulating a revival of dialect use among young people, but rather at facilitating the delivery of certain social services to the senior population. In September 2017, the leading Singaporean newspaper Straits Times noted that “The 10-episode Hokkien drama Jiak Ba Buay last year was reportedly the first dialect series aired in Singapore since 1979. It was a collaboration between Mediacorp and the Ministry of Communications and Information that was aimed at conveying government policies, such as MediShield Life, to senior citizens who may not be as comfortable in Mandarin.”25 It follows, then, that recent policy changes by the government should not be interpreted as a sign that Chinese topolects are experiencing a true revival, but perhaps instead that the government has recognized the overwhelming success of the Speak Mandarin Campaign and has therefore decided that limited broadcasts in dialects are not going to change the trajectory of declining usage of various topolects.

Languages are never static. But languages are also resilient. Despite the government’s effort to suppress dialect speaking in Singapore, and despite the clear economic benefits that have accrued to Singaporeans through the speaking of English and Mandarin, heritage languages are not likely to disappear entirely in the small island nation. Reinforcing the notion that the sentiments of young people are potentially responsible for this move, Dr. Patrick Ng of the University of Niigata Prefecture writes, “Thus contrary to official stance that dialects are to be discarded, Chinese dialects continue to demonstrate a streak of resilience, entrenching their relevance and utility amongst some dialects speakers in Singapore. Some young Chinese Singaporeans believe that dialects are still productive 73 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

linguistic resources.”26 While it is a pity for the vibrancy of the linguistic ecosystem in Singapore that many of the Chinese dialects will no longer be transmitted naturally from generation to generation, there is reason to be optimistic that the languages will continue to be available to both heritage users and anyone with even a passing interest in the language communities that shaped the history of Singapore. It appears fair to claim that Hokkien, Hakka, Fuzhou, and Teochew have now become “curated” languages and that this special state of linguistic preservation is further indication that Singapore is home to a remarkably dynamic linguistic environment that will continue to evolve over time.

(Endnotes) 1. The words “topolect” and “dialect” are used interchangeably in this paper.

2. Frost, Mark Ravinder and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow. Singapore: A Biography. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2013, 152.

3. Ibid., 164.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 170.

6. Kuo, Eddie C. Y. “The Sociolinguistic Situation in Singapore: Unity in Diversity.” In Language and Society in Singapore, ed. Afendras, Evangelos A. and Eddie C. Y. Kuo. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1980, 40-43.

7. Frost, Singapore: A Biography, 182 8. Ibid., 196.

9. Ang, Beng Choo. “The Teaching of the Chinese Language in Singapore.” Language, Society and Education in Singapore: Issues and Trends (1998): 337 10. Lee, Guan Kin. “Singapore Chinese Society in Transition: Reflections on the Cultural Implications of Modern Education.” In Chinese Migrants Abroad: Cultural, Educational and Social Dimensions of the Chinese Diaspora, ed. Charney, Michael W., Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Tong Chee Kiong. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003, 233 11. Ibid., 235.

12. Ibid., 231.

13. Ng, Patrick Chin Leong. A Study of Attitudes of Dialect Speakers Towards the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Singapore Springer, 2017, 21

Sinitic Languages 14. Frost, Singapore: A Biography, 236 15. Ng, A Study of Attitudes, 10 16. Künzi, Sofield Chao and Sylvia Chao. Interview by author. Skype. Philadelphia, December 4, 2017.

17. Tan, Charlene. “Change and Continuity: Chinese Language Policy in Singapore.” Language Policy 5, no. 1 (2006): 41-62.

18. Lee 240 19. Ibid.

20. Ng, A Study of Attitudes, 29 21. Ibid.

22. Newman, John. “Singapore’s “Speak Mandarin Campaign”: The Educational Argument.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 14, no. 2 (1986), 58 23. Singapore Department of Statistics. Census of Population 2010 : Demographic Characteristics, Education, Language and Religion. Statistical Release; 1. Singapore: Dept. of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2011.

24. Johnson, Ian. “In Singapore, Chinese Dialects Revive After Decades of Restrictions.” The New York Times, August 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/world/asia/singapore-language-hokkien-mandarin.html.

25. Chan, Boon. “askST: Why does Singapore restrict the broadcast of Chinese dialects in mass media?”

September 6, 2017. http://www.straitstimes.com/ lifestyle/entertainment/askst-why-does-singaporerestrict-the-broadcast-of-chinese-dialects-in-mass 26. Ng, A Study of Attitudes, 62

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Nitter

Book Review Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839-1937 by Scott S. Reese Ida Sofie Nitter Ida Sofie Nitter is a second-year Ph.D student in Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Political Science from Macalester College in 2013 and her Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago in 2016. Nitter’s research focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Arab Middle East in the colonial era.

“Residency officials found themselves involved in local burial practices, regulating the activities of spirit-possession cults, late night dhikr[1] and Qur’an recitations or mediating disputes between scripturalist reformers and supporters of Sufis.” (164) With this quotation, Scott Reese complicates the common imagination of the role of the colonial administration visà-vis the local population in the British Indian Ocean Empire. Before reading Reese’s book, the reader may imagine the bureaucrats as possibly British, most likely non-Muslim, and as outsiders controlling the Empire from above, ensuring the political and economic stability of the Empire, but not having any real interaction with local day-to-day life. Yet, in Imperial Muslims, Reese demonstrates that all of these expectations about the administration of the Empire are simplistic and oftentimes incorrect. However, these assumptions are not unfounded, as much of the literature on the British Indian Ocean Empire focuses on “the political, legal or economic consequences” of the Empire (2), while the impact of the Empire on the local populations, including its impact on the religious practice of the subjects of the Empire, is often overlooked.

Although the focus of this book is the core of the British Imperial presence in Aden from 1839-1937, it starts with an overview of Aden as a commercial center prior to the British Occupation of Aden in 1839. Rather than simply retelling a well-known narrative, Reese’s intention with this chapter is to highlight the imagined connection between the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia dating from the Medieval period including Islamic and non-Islamic tales that “literally bind Aden and al-Hind (India) to each other.” (12) Whereas the 75 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

first chapter established historic Aden as a diverse and flourishing transregional hub, chapter two shows that by the time the British colonial forces arrive in Aden in 1839, the city had dwindled away, and a new community needed to be created. The creation of this distinct community, despite Aden’s transregional connections, is explained through the remaining chapters.

In chapter three, Reese shows how the development and creation of physical and metaphysical sacred spaces was necessary to build a religious community in Aden. Chapter four shows the tensions that developed between the qadis (judges in Islamic courts) and the imperial bureaucrats (who were frequently Muslim themselves) and the ways the Empire shaped the legal systems in Aden. As in much of the British Empire, religious courts remained in control of family law, whereas other legal issues were controlled under a Western-created penal code, in this case, the Indian penal code.

Chapter five focuses on the religious practices of “less respectable” elements of society and demonstrates that even the fringes of society defined spaces for themselves despite the public opposition to their activities.

This is demonstrated through the study of two “spiritual possession cults,” (13) Zar and Tambura.

Finally, like chapter four, chapter six engages in discourses about religious authority amongst Muslims in Aden, however, with a focus on those who advocate for a “scripture-oriented religious reform” versus Sufis. The chapter shows that, although the modernist scripturalist movement was spreading transregionally at the time, the local debates around it was clearly shaped by the circumstance in Aden. The chapter also demonstrates that although great tensions existed be-

Imperial Muslims tween scripturalists and Sufis, both viewed “discursive authority as emanating ultimately from God and His Prophet, Muhammad,” though for the former located authority in “particular foundational written texts that they alone could interpret,” whereas the latter saw the spiritual power coming from “the realm of the divine and the Nur Muhammadiyya, literally the Prophetic Light that formed creation.” (13)

Through his study, Scott Reese makes an intervention into the existing literature on the British Indian Ocean Empire by focusing on the ways the Empire influenced the communities and lives of people living in the Empire. Reese achieves this by studying the development of the local community in Aden, Yemen, under colonial rule, showing how the Empire was involved in every aspect of life, “particularly the spiritual” (163), and that even “while British officials protested that the state did not interfere in the religious lives of its subjects, the hand of the Company or the Raj was always evident” (164). This is clear from the opening quotation of this review, where officers were involved in the regulation of religious activities. However, their involvement could also be more directly spiritual. Reese provides the example of Bernard Riley, who in his role as Resident oversaw the installation of a new kiswa (cloth) covering the shrine of Hashim al-Bahr during the saint’s annual ziyara (pilgrimage) (164). This was just one way in which officials of the Empire could impact the practice of Islam by the imperial subjects in Aden.

When studying the development of religious sites, Reese focuses both on physical and metaphysical spaces and their roles in the Empire. Although it is harder to prove the existence of a spiritual “space” than it is to point to the creation of a mosque or a shrine, Reese’s inclusion of these places enables him to show how the population of Aden, regardless of their social strata, were able to claim a space for themselves in the growing city. Thus, Reese shows that the wealthy in Aden demonstrated their attachment to Aden and thus their physical belonging by endowing and building mosques, patronizing of the shrines of local saints, and establishing Sufi orders in Aden (6). Both rich and poor used fate and religious practice to tie themselves to the growing community in Aden together in more “ineffable” ways, such as through the baraka (blessings) of a

deceased female saint (2), “[t]hrough participation in communal prayers, annual saints’ festivals and spirit-possession rituals” (165), and thus from their “common understandings of an Islamic multiverse” (163).

Imperial Muslims is in indirect conversation with much of the scholarship about the Middle East and the Indian Ocean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, Reese points out how the rapid increase in steam-ships and printing during this time directly shaped “Muslim social and spiritual trajectories” (164). The trade routes that went through Yemen were old; however, steam-ships made the routes much easier and faster to travel, which had as much of an impact on religious communities as it did on commerce and Empire building. Although there were no major printing presses in Aden, religious scripturalists and Sufis alike used the presses in Cairo and elsewhere to publish material that would then be used to advocate for their religious opinions. Thus, rather preaching from the pulpits, the early nineteenth century saw a deluge in publications that circulated in Aden. Similarly, by echoing Nile Green and his book Bombay Islam, Reese provides subtle critique of the understanding that Modernist Islam in the colonial age was uniform, and that revisionist and scripturalist movements replaced other religious movements often deemed “traditional” in comparison. Rather, Reese demonstrates that in Aden “Sufi Orders and the cult of the saints remained wildly popular” throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (8)

Scott Reese utilizes a wide range of sources in this book, such as the colonial archives from the India Office Library of the British Library, which include petitions, fatwas (religious legal opinions), affidavits, and sermons, in addition to the material usually found in colonial archives. Reese also studied classical and modern Arabic sources about Aden, including Mustabsir by Ibn Mujjawir, Tarikh Thaghr Adan by Abu Makhrama, the legal handbook, The Overflowing River, by al-Makki, and a number of other fictional and nonfictional texts concerning Aden. As Reese himself points out, there is one potential shortcoming of the book: despite dealing with the importance of transregional Indian Ocean connections with Aden, Reese has not engaged with sources in Gujarati, Urdu, or Hindi because of his own language constraints. I do not know of any scholar who VOLUME 8 | 76

Nitter can comfortably research in Arabic, Gujarati, Urdu, Hindi, Persian, Swahili and other languages you may need to â&#x20AC;&#x153;properlyâ&#x20AC;? study the Indian Ocean connections, so to highlight this lack is not a criticism, but rather points to the scope of research that is yet to be done on the Indian Ocean region.

Reese makes one particularly interesting comment regarding his sources, namely that the decision to end the study in 1937 was in parts guided by the sources themselves. 1937 was the year the control of Aden transferred entirely to the British Colonial office, whereas it had previously been under the control of the East India Company as part of the Bombay Presidency. Administratively, this alteration meant that things changed on the ground in Aden, however, it also meant that the types of records that the administrators kept changed and the new colonial registrars focused on details of the bureaucracy rather than daily life; thus, it is not possible for Reese to conduct the same study of the period after 1937.

Despite focusing on Aden, Imperial Muslims is a transregional work that demonstrates the importance of the British Colonial Empire on the day-to-day life of the colonial subjects. As a result, this book will appeal to a broad range of historians of: the British Empire, the colonial period, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, South Asia. The book will also provide useful insights to scholars of modern Islamic thought, especially scholars of Sufism.

77 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

从经济和政治角度来分析中国“走出去战略” James McPhail James McPhail is a senior in the Huntsman program, concentrating in Finance in the Wharton School and majoring in International Studies and minoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is interested in China’s political economy. Mr. McPhail’s study abroad experience at Peking University in Beijing, China informed his work.

（一）介绍 自从改革开放以来，中国就开始享 受到了全球化的好处。中国经济的飞速发 展，特别进入世界贸易组织以后，由于中 国劳动力价格低廉，所以能够为世界各国 提供低价商品，因此，中国被称为“世界 工厂”。中国的这个阶段代表了发展的一 种惯常模式：利用低技能劳动或原料来吸 引投资。 但现在，由于经济的繁荣，中 国出现了大批处于成长阶段的中产阶级， 也具有巨大的外汇储备。这些情况的发生 使很多压力集中于如何使中国的经济结构

际资产，并加强对国际关系的影响。自 2014 年以来，中国成为世界第二大外商 直接投资的供应国 12 。这个“走出去战略” 代表中央政府对经济政策的思想转变，从 强调国内的制造业到注重服务和高科技行 业。虽然执行这个“走出去战略”存在某些 明显的风险，比如在存在投资项目安全方 面的风险等，但我认为这个政策能帮助中 国达到中长期的经济和国际关系的发展目 标。这些目标包含一个发达的，多样化的 经济基础，成为一个备受尊敬的，并可逐 步比肩欧美的现代化国家。

（二）在国外投资的经济

成熟化或使其转型到一个不同的，比较发 达的模式。因此，中国政府积极地促进

原因

“走出去战略”，以便在国外投资，获得国

VOLUME 8 | 78

McPhail 在要探索为什么中国执行这个“走

美国政府债券的收益率降得很低（2%左

出去战略”中，其中重要的问题是中国有

右），因此迫使中国投资者在其他地方追

什么目标，也是要了解在中国目前经济社

求更好的收益。所以自那以后，中国在其

会情况下为什么这个战略有道理。作者将

他地区（特别是拉丁美洲和非洲）的投资

以两个角度来探讨这个问题：经济和政治。

大幅增加 。 在 2013 年，中国在拉美地区

作者认为用经济角度来探讨，“走出去战

的对外直接投资比美国多（中国占两百六

略”有四个重大的动机重点：外汇储备，

十亿美元，而美国占两百二十亿美元） 5 。

人民币汇率通货紧缩，投资外国资产的愿

虽然中国投资总额在非洲收到的总额比较

望，和自然资源进入的能力。

小（3%），但它的增长极快。拉丁美洲

首先, 随着中国的快速经济发展，

和加勒比 共同体 论坛 （ CELAC） 制定了

积累了大量外汇储备。中国的外汇储备在

2015-2019 年度计划，目标是年度贸易额

2001 年仅为两百亿美元左右，而 2014 年

超过五百亿美元，中国的对外直接投资增

达到四万亿美元（几乎增加了二十倍） 3 。

加到超过二十五亿美元6。

这是因为中国出口制造产品到各国各地，

第二，在第一点原因的作用下，中

它收到的货款通常是美元。中国对这些外

国巨大的外汇储备对人民币汇率的上升造

汇储备的操纵选择有限，可以支付昂贵的

成了很大的压力。国际社会对中国的浮动

费用，将其转换成人民币，或者将其投资

货币有很大的需求。但是，中国仍然希望

到国外。中国通常所做的是后者 —— 美

对货币进行维持控制，因为这种控制在快

国对中国的国债超过一万亿美元，占国债

速发展中是一个主要工具 —— 通过人为

总额的 27%4。但由于 2008 年的金融危机，

压低人民币汇率，使中国出口的产品对于

79 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

外国消费者来说变得很便宜。但由于经济

业依靠成长率数字来使投资者满意。如果

学家对中国经济未来的不好预测，不少跨

企业不继续努力，公司的股价很可能下泻。

国公司将资源重新分配到国外，还有中国

随着中国资本市场的自由化，很多成熟化

富裕人士也将财富转移到国外 7 。为了缓

的压力被放在企业身上，这种跨境并购趋

解这些资本外逃的压力，中国央行通过买

势也蔓延到了中国。因为中国企业在国际

入人民币（因此模仿真实需求）来干预外

市场中竞争，同时，外国公司在中国市场

汇市场，以维持汇价稳定 。从 2015 年到

中竞争，所以中国发展技术的需求越来越

现在，中国的外汇储备从近四万亿美元急

大。大多中国公司之所以在技术方面落后

剧下降到三万亿美元 8 。如果这种干预继

于西方企业，是因为中国企业比外国企业

续下去，中国继续用外币资助外汇的战略

进入国际市场的时间晚。故此，为了赶上

可能会受到阻碍。

西方公司的水平，不少中国公司想要添置

第三，很多中国公司对跨境并购吸

这些外国核心资产，也就是在运营中与外

引因为有些原因。据华尔街日报和中国货

国企业接轨。.除了取得技术以外，还有

币网统计，2010 年中国跨境并购仅五百

一些中国公司在追求购买一些西方公司享

亿元，2016 年超过两千多亿元（增长四

有的无形资产，比如知识产权，品牌认识

倍） 9 , 10 。首先，因为中国经济的成长率，

度，管理方式等。许多国际银行已经注意

以及市场饱和与过分容量，所以很多国内

到这一趋势，并以此来吸引更多的业务。

公司（特别国有企业）把跨境并购视为一

比如，花旗亚洲首席执行官（克里斯汀•

种继续成长的方法，即使是徒有其表的成

拉曼）说：“我们最近在中国以外的重点

长。这个巧计在西方企业非常流行因为企

地区，包括一带一路区域的地区，设立了

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McPhail 一些中国柜台，以支持全世界的中国银行

有利的地位，特别是可以免受威胁，拥有

业需求。”11

更多的筹码。由于中国主要通过矿山，农

最后，由于制造业是中国最重要的

田和油田等重大投资来提取资源，所以有

经济成分之一（相当于 43%的国内生产总

些当地人抱怨说中国在进行“新殖民主义”

值12），所以为了保证这一产业的持续产

（例如：中国出口总额的 2/3 以上来自巴

出，中国对于自然资源的需求很大 ——

西的只是大豆和铁矿石）15，也就是像西

比如石油，铁矿，铜板，木头等。中国之

方国家曾经对他们所做的一样。虽然有人

所以需要从外国取得资源，是因为中国的

抱怨，但中国的投资往往受到欢迎：事实

自然资源没有那么丰富。在 2015 年，中

上，很多非洲国家的基础设施订单在招标

国的石油和矿物油进口总额占所有进口量

和建设时，中国企业都会成为最后的赢家。

的 12%以上13。中国自然资源的缺乏也对

（三）在国外投资的政治和国

能源安全带来了影响，因此这除了是经济 问题也是一种比较广泛的政治问题。中国 有世界最大的能源需求 —— 2014 年，中 国消耗了世界能源的 20.3%，而美国的消 耗量是 19.2%14。因此，中国需要买到石 油或煤气管道；中国已经通过拉美，非洲 和中东国家（如伊朗）合作来使这种能源 的来源多元化。如果中国可以减少一定程 度的资源依赖，它就在国际谈判中占据更

际关系原因 除了经济原因，在国外投资方面中 国还有重要的政治原因，其中最重要的是 在国际关系方面：中国希望成为超级大国， 与美国等西方国家媲美。跟十九世纪的英 国和二十世纪的美国一样，中国想在全球 范围施加影响和领导别的国家。在探索中 “走出去战略”的国际政治原因，作者再发 现四个要点：面对世界基础设施的差距，

81 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

人民币的国际化，转移全球联盟（比如在

条款保证中国投资者，供应商和劳动者会

联合国），和扩大文化与教育的影响力。

获得优惠待遇，也因此在阿根廷引起了轩

首先，中国想要利用巨大的资本

然大波。帮助相对不发达的国家修建紧要

（大多在国企银行）来投资全球基础设施

基础设施是一种全球领导国的活动，中国

项目。它的“一带一路”政策，亚洲基建投

希望拥有这样的领导地位。但，除了利他

资银行，亚洲开发银行，和其它的企业都

主义动机之外，中国做这样还有跟美国抗

帮助中国对接国外基建项目，每年差不多

衡的动机。例如，中国通过王静的 HKND

是一千亿美元16。中国通常不只投资这些

公司在尼加拉瓜提出了修建五百亿美元的

基础设施项目，而且也参与建设，比如不

运河的议案。但是，由于王静在中国的股

少中国公司在帮助世界各国进行基础建设。

灾中身价贬值了 80%，此项目现在没有任

修建基础设施是中国最好的竞争优势之一，

何进展18。无论如何，这个雄心勃勃的建

从而这对中国理想合适。出口高附加值产

议显然对美国支持的巴拿马运河造成了挑

品如高速铁路，提升了中国在国外的形象，

战和威胁，因为巴拿马运河目前是对中美

展现了其新的竞争力。中国的公共交通，

洲的贸易垄断的重要途径。

特别地铁和高速铁路，在世界中是优质的，

第二，中国认为人民币国际化是一

连特朗普选举时也常常称赞。此外，

种打击美国主导的“美元外交”秩序的手段。

2014 年，中国帮助阿根廷度过了金融危

无可否认，美元是国际贸易货币（占全球

机。中国向阿根廷提供了 74 亿美元贷款

外汇储备约 60%，也是大多数商品交易的

17 。但这贷款的条件需要阿根廷使用钱建

基础19 ），美国自然与许多国际交易存在

两座水电站和一座铁路工程。此合同中有

利害关系。美元的固有需求意味着美国的

VOLUME 8 | 82

McPhail 货币总是相对较强，这也就使美国消费者

援助金额的 86%21。另外，这个计算只是

相对富裕。如果中国能对人民币进一步放

包括了外援，所以如果考虑到投资和贷款，

宽控制，并开始在国际贸易，贷款等活动

其影响就更大。中国已经看到了这一战略

中以美元为代替人民币，那会让中国变得

的积极影响 —— 非洲国家多次支持中国

更加强大。今年早些时候，在货币竞争力

的外交政策。例如：在 2014 年，南非禁

方面，中国已经获得了巨大的胜利：当时

止达赖喇嘛入境； 在 2016 年初，肯尼亚

国际货币基金组织将人民币纳入特别提款

将五十台湾籍国民驱逐到中国22。中国已

权货币篮子。虽然这是一种进步，但是很

经拥有在联合国安理会的永久的、强大的

多人认为中国需要完全地放开汇率，用人

否决权，但其势力范围的继续扩大也会创

民币对付其他货币自由浮动。中国政府也

造优惠投票权集团，这样当然有利于前进。

认为这样可能带来很严重的不稳定性，是

最后，为了深化和其他国家的关系，

一个很大的风险。中国人民银行行长周小

中国有望在国外扩大其文化和教育影响，

川最近在接受采访时表示：“我们务实，

这一点最能从中国政府的行动反映出来。

耐心，坚定不移地实现我们的目标，但不

中国已经在 93 个国家设立了 300 多所孔

打算直接向改革目标迈进。”20

子学院，目标是促进外国人对中文的了解

第三，中国的“走出去战略”使得它

和对中国文化的认识。此外， 2015 年以

从外国受得更多的尊敬也增加它在联合国

来，在拉美地区，中国总理、主席访问了

和其他的国际组织的影响力。根据

拉美国家多达 25 次以上。除此之外，中

AidData，一个国家在联合国投票中对中

国在该地区也提供了 6 千多个本科奖学金

国的支持每增加 10%，中国会提高对该国

机会，6 千多个实习生职位和 4 百多个名

83 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

硕士奖学金，鼓励外国学生来中国学习23。

总而言之，中国与外国的关系更加

不但中国政府促进文化和教育交流，而且

复杂化和更加相互依存。“走出去战略”的

中国公司有同样的做法。比如，在尼日利

建立使得中国通过融资和执行基础设施项

亚首都，华为公司十年以前就建立一所培

目，提供援助贷款和跨国并购等多种机制，

训学校来发展当地人才24。这种做法表明

以便在国际上提高自己的国际地位。 鉴

中国有与非洲领域保持长期的，积极的合

于中国巨大的外汇储备，国内经济增长放

作关系。从作者个人经验来说，两年以前

缓，建筑基础设施的竞争优势，这个政策

作者在北京语言大学读书，最常见的学习

对于许多中国企业来说都是合理的。有些

汉语的外国人来自非洲西部；当我问他们

专家认为中国的最终目标是在国际政治经

对中国的兴趣时，他们说在老家中国提供

济领域与美国竞争。 中国认为自己应该

了有越来越多的机会，能直接与中国人交

处于超级大国的地位，随着中国经济的发

流会大大增加就业机会和觉得更高工资的

展，也准备在未来十年内接替美国的现有

潜力。

地位。“走出去的战略”可能可以帮助中国 超越美国，实现“中国世纪”的预测。

1 2

Peters, Enrique Dussel. “China’s Evolving Role in Latin America: Can It Be a Win-Win?” Atlantic Council (2016): 1-28. Print.

3 “China Foreign Exchange Reserves | 1980-2017 | Data | Chart” Trading Economics, 2017. Web. 8 Apr 2017.

4 Amadeo, Kimberly. “How Much Does the U.S. Owe China?” The Balance. About Inc., 23 Mar. 2017. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.

5 Wang, Hongying. "A Deeper Look at China's Going Out Policy." Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Cigonline.org, 08 Mar. 2016. Web. 29 Mar. 2017.

6 Peters, Enrique Dussel. Ibid 7 Chen, Wenjie, David Dollar, and Heiwai Tang. Why Is China Investing in Africa? Evidence from the Firm Level. IMF, Aug. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

8 “China Foreign Exchange Reserves | 1980-2017 | Data | Chart” Trading Economics, 2017. Web. 8 Apr 2017.

9 Yue, Pan. "China’s M&A Market Slows In 2016 With CrossBorder Deals A Bright Spot." China Money Network. China Money Network Limited, 09 Jan. 2017. Web. 8 Apr. 2017.

10

Steinberg, Julie. "Chinese Companies Are Shopping Abroad at Record Pace." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 29 Mar. 2017.

11

"Citibank Fully behind China's 'going Out' Strategy." China Daily Business. China Daily, 13 Mar. 2017. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

12 "China GDP - Composition by Sector." Index Mundi. Index Mundi, 2016. Web. 8 Apr. 2017.

13 "China Imports By Category." China Imports By Category.

Trading Economics, 2017. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

14 "Countries with Highest Primary Energy Consumption." The Shift Project Data Portal. The Shift Project, 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

15 Peters, Enrique Russell. Ibid 16 Peters, Enrique Russell. Ibid 17 Peters, Enrique Russell. Ibid 18 Daley, Suzanne. "Lost in Nicaragua, a Chinese Tycoon's Canal Project." The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

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McPhail 22 19

Amadeo, Kimberly. "Why the Dollar Is the Global Currency." The Balance. The Balance, 22 Oct. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

20 Wang, Hongying. Ibid 21 Manero, Elizabeth. "China's Investment in Africa: The New Colonialism?" Harvard Political Review. Harvard University, 02 Feb. 2017. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

85 | PENN ASIAN REVIEW

Manero, Elizabeth. Ibid Peters, Enrique Russell. Ibid 24 Brautigam, Deborah. "5 Myths About Chinese Investment in Africa." Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy, 04 Dec. 2015. Web. 2 Apr. 2017.

23

SPECIAL THANKS: Julio Sosa (photography)

PAR Editorial Board '18 For submissions & inquiries, please contact penn.asian.review@gmail.com or visit pennasianreviewonline.blogspot.com

Volume 8, Spring 2018