Physical Geography

--East Asia: Asian Continent: China, Mongolia Islands: Japan, Taiwan Peninsula: North Korea, South Korea --Southeast Asia Indochina Peninsula: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar Malay Peninsula: Malaysia, Singapore Islands: Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines

Climate

Monsoons are important in both East Asia and Southeast Asia Climates include Tropical Rain Forest, Humid Subtropical, Humid Continental, Marine West Coast, and Highland

Natural Resources

Renewable Several major rivers including Hwang He (Yellow), Chiang Jiang (Yangtze), Xi, and Mekong The Sea of Japan, South and East China Sea Nonrenewable Large deposits of minerals throughout the regions Indonesia has a lot of oil

Population

-China has the highest population in the world -Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world -Both regions are increasingly urbanized -Urbanization means people live more and more in cities

History

Yeah, right

History

WW2 and Asia 1. US drops atomic

bombs on Japan and wins war in Pacific

2. China becomes a Communist country in 1949

3. Taiwan becomes the home of the Chinese who did not want to be Communist

4. Korea is divided into North and South

5. Many colonies try to gain independence

Culture

Major Religion: Buddhism

Economy

Some of the countries are developed, like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea Most of the countries are in the middle. They aren’t develoPED but they are not super poor, either. This would include China, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Some countries are develoPING: Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia. Many countries benefit from outsourcing.

Environment

Major environment challenges: Pollution Population Deforestation Industrialization

Outsourcing

Outsourcing It costs money to make stuff. Businesses have to pay for the materials and has to pay people to put the stuff together. In a developed country, workers usually get paid quite a bit and get other things that cost the company money like social security and health insurance. One way companies save money is by sending the work they need done to developing countries. This is called outsourcing. This allows the company to save money (benefit), the workers in the developing countries to earn more money than they probably ever thought they would (benefit) and consumers in developed countries get low, low prices (benefit—think of Dollar Tree). The developing countries get more money in their economy. The group of people most hurt by outsourcing are the workers in the developed countries who lost jobs because of competition by workers who would work for way less.

Japan’s Trading Network

In order to be industrialized, a place needs a lot of different resources. Islands lack as many resources as places located on continents. Because of this, island nations like Japan and the United Kingdom must built large trading networks. The United Kingdom controlled a lot colonies in order to get the resources they needed to be industrialized. Japan has done a couple of things. For a long time they traded but then decided they wanted to be SURE they had the resources they needed. In order to do that, they chose to go to war. In the 1930s, Japan attacked China in order to take over. This made the US mad Japan went to war against the US because they thought it would allow them to win. They didn’t.