Terms Flashcards
Alluvial Fan
Fan-shaped deposits of sediments dropped by streams flowing out of the mountains. These areas have long been devoted to intensive cultivation.
Exotic Rivers
Originate in more humid areas. Very scarce in the Gobi
Bodhisattva
Spiritual being who helps others attain enlightenment. The Dalai Lama is considered to be a reincarnation of Bodhisattva of compassion.
Taliban
Extremist organization that insisted that all aspects of society conform to its own harsh version of Islamic orthodoxy. Controlled Afghanistan from mid 1990’s-2001.
Theocracy
Religious state. Tibet was essentially a theocracy with the Dalai Lama enjoying political as well as religious authority.
Exclave
A piece of territory separated from the rest of the country.
Transhumance
Move their flocks from lowland pastures in the winter to highland meadows in the summer.
Pastoralists
People who raise livestock for subsistence purposes.
Shanghai Cooperation ORganization (SCO)
“Shanghai Six” Composed of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The SCO seeks cooperation on such security issues as terrorism and separatism, aims to enhance trade, and serves as a counterbalance against the US. Mongolia is an “Observer”.
Anthropogenic Landscape
Land that has been heavily transformed by human activities. Virtually its entire extent is either cultivated or occupied by houses, factories, and other structures of human society. North China Plain is the best example of this.
Superconurbation
Megalopolis. Huge zone of coalesced metropolitan areas.
Autonomous Region
Provinces that have been granted a certain degree of political and cultural autonomy, or freedom from centralized authority, owing to the fact that they contain large numbers of non-Han Chinese people. Critics contend that they have little true autonomy.
Burakumin
Also known as Eta, an outcast group of Japanese whose ancestors worked in “polluting” industries such as leathercraft. Victimized people in Japan. Among the poorest and least educated people in Japan.
Central Place Theory
Holds that an evenly distributed rural population will give rise to a regular hierarchy of urban places, with uniformly spaced larger cities surrounded by constellations of smaller cities, each of which, in turn, will be surrounded by smaller towns.
China Proper
The eastern half of the country of China where the Han Chinese form the dominant ethnic group. The vast majority of China’s population is located in China proper.
Diaspora
Scattering of a particular group of people over a vast geographical area. This has brought hundreds of thousands of Koreans to the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Tonal
Their worlds are composed of a single syllable, and the meaning of each basic syllable changes according to the pitch in which it is uttered.
Marxism
Demands absolute loyalty to North Korea’s political leaders. Means “self-reliance.”
Geomancy
Feng shui. The Chinese and Korean practice of designing buildings in accordance with the spiritual powers that supposedly course through the local topography.
Cold War (China)
China decided early on during the Cold War decades that they would isolate themselves as much as possible from Western and global culture.
COnfucianism
Philosophy developed by Confucius. Came to occupy a significant position in all of the societies of the region. Some call East Asian the “Confucian world.”
Ideographic Writing
Each character primarily represents an idea rather than a sound. Ideographic writing requires the use of a large number of distinct symbols.
Laissez-faire
French term meaning “Let it be.” Hong Kong has a very strong laissez-faire economic system, meaning to have a great amount of market freedom from government interference.
Social and Regional Differntiation
Certain groups of people and certain portions of the country prospered far more than others during the Chinese economic surge.
Sediment Load
Suspended clay, silt, and sand. Makes the Huang He the world’s muddiest major river.
Mandarins
Members of the high-level bureaucracy of Imperial China (before 1911). Mandarin Chinese is the official spoken language of the country and is the native tongue of the vast majority of people living in the north, central, and southwestern China.
Pollution exporting
Because of Japan’s high cost of production and its strict environmental laws, many Japanese companies have moved their dirtier factories overseas. In effect, Japan’s pollution has been partially displaced to poorer countries.
Regulatory Lakes
IN periods of high water, river flows are diverted into regulatory lakes in order to reduce the flow downstream.
Rust Belt
Manchurian rust belt or zone of decaying factories are not efficient. Once productive oil wells, are largely exhausted.
Shogunate
The political order of Japan before 1868, in which the power was held by the military leader known has the shogun, rather than the emperor, whose authority was merely symbolic. A Shogun was a supreme military leader who theoretically remained under the emperor.
Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
Foreign investment is welcome and state interference minimal. Basic strategy is to attract foreign investment that could generate exports, the income from which would supply China with the capital it needed to build its infrastructure and thus achieve conditions of sustained economic growth.
Spheres of Influence
In a sphere of influence the colonial power had no formal political authority but did enjoy informal influence and tremendous economic clout. Not formally colonized. Gained for trade purposes and more generally for economic exploitation and political manipulation.
Urban Primacy
Urban population concentrated in a single city.
British East India Company:
Private firm that acted as an arm of the British Government. Monopolized overseas trade and began to stake out a South Asian Empire of it’s own.
• Maharaja
Hindu king subject to British advisors.
• Caste System
Strict division of society into different hierarchically ranked hereditary groups.