Geopolitics and Asia’s little divergence: State building in China and Japan after 1850

Abstract

We provide a new framework to account for the diverging paths of political development in China and Japan during the late nineteenth century. The arrival of Western powers not only brought opportunities to adopt new technologies, but also fundamentally threatened the sovereignty of both countries. These threats and opportunities produce an unambiguous impetus toward centralization and modernization for small states, but place conflicting demands on larger states.We use our theory to study why China, which had been centralized for much of its history, experienced gradual disintegration upon the Western arrival, and how Japan rapidly unified and modernized.

The state in Chinese economic history

“…Through a comparative study of nineteenth‐century China and Japan, Koyama et al (2018) offer an analytical framework that highlights the role of geopolitics and territorial size in explaining the post‐1850 ‘Little Divergence’ between China and Japan. They argue that the ambivalent attitude of the Chinese state and elites towards reform can be understood from the perspectives of benefits and costs.…”

Translation movements in the modernization processes of Turkey and China

“…Meanwhile, in Japan, a comprehensive official programme of state-building and modernization was undertaken while these efforts were limited in China (Koyama et al, 2018). Although Turkey's modernization is frequently compared to Russia's and Japan's, one difference between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, for instance, is the "offensive modernization" of the former, which aims to be acknowledged and included in Europe, and the "defensive modernization" of the latter, which aims to hold on to its belongings (Acar, 2008, p. 65).…”

“…There are also many comparative studies on modernization that partly touch upon the role of translation (see Koyama et al, 2018 for a Japan-Turkey comparison; Rustow & Ward, 1964 for China-Japan comparison). The translation literature also embodies research that involves comparisons of the translation movements of different countries and cultures in their modernization processes (see Berk, 2006 for a comparison of Turkish, Czech, Bulgarian and Finnish translations; Haag, 2011 for Chinese and Japanese modernizing).…”