Geography of East Asia

Introduction

East Asia is the second subregion out of three that make up Asia. It has 6 different countries which are China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. East Asia is heavily anchored by China (People's Republic of China). Mongolia is a medium sized and landlocked country. To the northeast there are two peninsulas, North and South Korea. To the southeast there is Taiwan (Republic of China), where China lays claim politically. The last country is Japan, which has had a long history of technological advancements.

Physical Geography

There is a wide and different range of habitats that include cold and dry grasslands to humid and hot subtropical forests. The reasons there is such a diversity in the environments because of how East Asia has great longitudinal and latitudinal extremes. It has similar latitudinal dimensions to the lower part of the United States.

Landforms

There are many similarities in China and the United States when going east-west. Such as in the east, the many river basins and dry uplands. But in the west there are more highlands. Probably the most human impacted environmental region in China is the Loess Plateau. Loess is elevated 4,000-5,000 feet above sea level. It is situated between the Ordos Desert and the North China Plain. It has a very fine and yellow soil that came thousands of years ago from Mongolian grass.

Downstream of the Loess Plateau is the North China Plain. North China Plain is an extensive riverine surface built up from the silt deposited by the Huang He on an ancient shallow continental shelf (World Regional Geography). Over the past few centuries, the Huang He river has deposited silt which made the riverbed elevate gradually and the water the river carries is above it's surrounding plain.

East Asia may be characterized by various mountain chains and basins, but those are a result of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Pacific Ring of Fire. The most affected place in the Ring of Fire is Japan. It has a long history of mountains and volcanoes because of the movements of tectonic plates, the Pacific and Philippine plates, which are sub-ducted under the Eurasian and North American plates

Climate

East Asia has a monsoon type of climate. But that is modified by its east coast location and its more northerly and continental position. Rainfall levels are highest in southern China where the annual number is 50 inches. Resulting in the lowlands of Eastern China experience warm and humid summers similar to southeastern United States.

Similar to much of East Asia, China also has hurricane like typhoons. They typically happen in the bigger cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai. If you compare Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes, the Pacific hurricanes happen more often and are more powerful because of how big the Pacific is and how the water is warmer.

Human Geography

Human Geography in East Asia is very interesting. It has seen many different generations over time and different points in time. It had seen different political views which was mostly communism. The people saw that party launch new programs such as the one that reconstructed China's agricultural production.

Culture

A long time ago, the great trade routes went all throughout Asia and especially in central-eastern. That helped influence the many different types of ideas there such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and the different and former ideas of Greek mythology. All those concepts were spreading through East Asia. They also learned about different types of Indian arts. Another different type of cultural idea that spread across Asia was the use of hand puppets. In East Asia these were mostly used to tell stories easier and make them enjoyable to watch.

Economics

With agriculture, one of the primary goals of east Asia industrial policy has been to promote self-sufficiency. The government was very successful enforcing that until the transformative policy reforms in the 1970s. Ever since then, the different influences of the global economy and rise of both foreign and domestic investments in manufacturing has made East Asia a much more money prominent region of the world.

Politics

East Asia has a very wide variety of political stand points throughout their region. They have different views such as one party states, federal states, dependent territories, liberal democracies, military dictatorships, etc. North Korea is a very weird situation. Their constitution defines their political system as "dictatorship of people's democracy". Very contradicting. Their leadership, Worker's Party of Korea, is leading all of North Korea and has been in power ever since 1984