Two Important Principles in the Field of Human Geography Are Hearth Areas and Diffusion

Chapter 13: China the Giant

Hobbs, Joseph and Salter, Christopher. 2007. Essentials of World Regional Geography, Fifth or Sixth Edition

Two important principles in the field of Human Geography are hearth areas and diffusion. The hearth is the place where a new innovation affecting humans first appears and diffusion is its pattern and process of spread across the landscape from the hearth area.

From the very first section of this chapter choose at least one innovation demonstrating China’s historical role as a hearth and then discuss the diffusion of this “thing” across space. Next as you read the remaining part of the chapter look for additional examples, look especially for a very, very recent one. Be aware that not all innovations are human induced nor necessarily beneficial to humans.

For all following questions it will be assumed that we are looking at things from Hobbs and Salter’s perspective, if you have questions on the accuracy of these you are free to raise that issue while citing your own scholarly sources. This said, I find Hobbs and Salter pretty much in the scholarly mainstream and their answers viewed by the profession as quite accurate.

·  Is China a particularly fertile country for agriculture?

·  How many people are there in China?

·  What fraction of the world’s population lives in China?

13.1 Accomplishments…

·  China in Chinese characters means Middle Kingdom. What does this mean? What is it between? Think carefully and completely.

·  What and where is the Huang He?

·  What kind of agriculture has been practiced on the Huang He’s alluvial plains?

·  The Shang dynasty is mentioned as one of the earliest regional dynasties in China. Approximately when did it exist and how long did it last?

·  When did the Qin dynasty unify China into a great land empire?

·  What is the name of the main ethnic group in China (those mentioned as the conquerors)?

·  What two nomadic invaders conquered China and established their own dynasties?

·  During its early contact with European colonial powers China limited its trade to these countries to one port, which one is it and where is it located?

·  When was the Opium War? What economic item did Great Britain force China to accept in trade?

·  What is extraterritoriality?

·  What special things are mentioned about Treaty Ports?

·  After the Chinese Revolution of 1911 which two political parties came to unify and then rule China? Where are they today?

13. 2 Setting

Ignore the size comparison some scholars list China as larger then the USA. But they are very close in size with only Russia and Canada being larger.

·  What is the fraction of American population to China’s?

·  What are the two main environmental areas of China? Be able to draw the boundary between the two on a map and explain what this line generally corresponds to.

·  What is the major environmental handicap in the western region in China?

Arid China (see also discussion section in the sidebar)

Be able to locate and draw the perimeter of the following on a base map (see base map at bottom):

·  Tibetan Plateau (locate and draw perimeter)

·  Basins (locate and draw perimeter)

o  Tarmim Basin

o  Dzugarian Basin

o  Red

·  Following Mountain Ranges (north to south) (locate and draw as thick lines)

o  Altai Mountains

o  Tian Shan, Qilian Shan, Qinling Shan (joint system)

o  Kunlun Shan

o  Himalayan

·  Deserts (west to east) (locate and draw perimeter)

o  Taklamakan

o  Gobi

·  Rivers (locate from existing lines)

o  Huang He (Yellow)

o  Chang Jiang (Yangtze)

·  What percent of China’s population lives in the western region? As a result what percent would be in the eastern region?

·  What are the three main non-Han ethnic groups in this region?

·  There are three large regions that are related to autonomous provinces in this western area, what are they? Among these three regions inside of which region is there still a non-Han ethnic group which is the majority of the population? Why don’t the other two regions have such a majority?

·  About what fraction of China’s total land area is contained in the Tibetan Highlands?

·  Why is the Tarim Basin particularly dry?

·  What does the word Taklamakan translate as? What does this tell us about the Taklamakan desert?

·  A green belt is being planted to contain desertification and blowing sand from which deserts? (In fact we sometimes find fine particles from these dust storms in our own rain storms in Bellingham.)

·  Approximately how big is this green belt going to be? What geographic region could you compare it to?

·  Where is Xinjiang’s population concentrated? How would this demonstrate patterns and process? How might the historical existence of these concentrations of population also demonstrate principles of Site and Situation.

·  New transportation links through these area serve two major purposes what are they?

·  What kind of resources exist in Xinjiang province?

·  Although the majority of the population in Nei Mongolia is Han Chinese, they are highly concentrated. Where? What site condition led to this concentration? Again can you also state this as a pattern and process example?

·  At the height of their empire, when the Mongols ruled China how far west did their empire extend?

·  The Mongols and other “barbarians” had long been pulled towards China proper, especially for conquest and raiding parties. In the 15th century what barrier was erected in an unsuccessful attempt to limit this migration?

·  What major industrial center was opened in the main city of Nei Mongolia (Baotou) and who was instrumental in opening it. We will return to this in section 13.4.

Humid China

What are this region’s two major subregions? In addition what is the third region that straddles the Humid – Arid boundary line?

“Third region”

·  What is the common name for this region in the West?

·  What countries border this region on the north and east?

·  What important grain crop cannot be grown here and why?

·  Why can’t winter grain crops grow here?

·  When did Han Chinese first begin to move into this area in large numbers?

·  They now make up the vast majority of the population, how big is that population?

North China

Note the low level of precipitation in this region, in comparison Bellingham gets about 32 inches per year, even more important what about variability? We will discuss this in a class lecture.

What common winter grain crop is grown here (hint it is also grown as winter grain crop in Eastern Washington which is also a semi-arid area)?

Because of the variability in precipitation what is there a history of in this region?

What river is most important in this region?

What does the book tell us about the loess soils in a large inland part of this region? Is loess good or bad for the North China plain that this river flows across? Is the negative side of this situation somewhat similar to what recently occurred in New Orleans (and here it has been occurring for several thousand years!)?

Despite the problems in this area is it the historical focus of Chinese civilization?

What is the Grand Canal and roughly when was it built? Relative to other canals on the face of the earth how long is this canal?

Why was the Grand Canal built? What were the main grains traded on this canal and which moved south and which moved south?

What will the new use of this canal be in the near future (originally this was planned to be completed in time for the 2008 Olympics, but it may not be done in time)?

South China

What mountain range divides this region from North China? What river drainages or watersheds do these mountains divide?

There are the three large basins of the Chang Jiang, lower or coastal plains, middle, and upper. What industrial city is at the center of the middle one? Can you guess which major world urban center is on the southern delta of the Chang Jiang? What divides the middle one from Upper one?

What is the other name for the upper basin, located above the Three Gorges?

Where is the real cultural heartland (or hearth) of Southern China? Note that this major Chinese city is on a river delta, which one? Also this city is very close to Hong Kong.

West of the Guangzho lowlands is an area ethnically different then much of this region of China, how so? Also, what crop had been grown here in the past (and once again is appearing) and what site and situation conditions favored its cultivation in the past?

Inset on Ethnic Geography

·  What is the current government policy towards the Uighar (mainly Muslim) and Tibetan (mainly Budhist) minorities?

·  What are the goals of the Western Big Development Project?

·  What portion of Lhasa’s population is now Han Chinese? Likewise in Xinjiang what is the proportion of Han?

·  Might we learn why China might be a supporter of America’s war on terror based on this reading? What do you personally think about that?

Inset on the Three Gorges Dam

·  The information here is a bit dated, but not too bad. I took WWU students to this area over three different summers, it is a fascinating area to study. Convince me and I will take students again next summer.

·  We will spend a class period on this dam late in the semester.

·  What are the expected benefits of the dam? What are some of the drawbacks (note that Bill Gates spent his honeymoon in the Three Gorges – but don’t limit your thoughts only to the impacts on the super rich)?

·  Note the somewhat dated diagram of proposed water transfer schemes in this area (not unlike what we have done in California a half a century ago). In the fall course we will discuss them in more detail.

13.3 Issues of Chinese Agriculture

·  What portion of Chinese population is currently supported by Agriculture (in comparison in the US it’s around 1%)?

·  What portion of Chinese land is not in agricultural cultivation?

·  On the other hand compared to the quantity of arable land in the US does China have more or less and what would be the comparative percentage?

·  However, when we figure in irrigated land and multiple cropping patterns does this situation change? Finally how many acres of arable land per person is available for the total population in China and the US? Might this tell us something about which country utilizes its resource more efficiently?

·  Hobbs and Salter gloss over the disastrous agricultural policies of Mao, without going into detail let me say that when I would sit and talk to Chinese students your age and have them draw out family trees, I was surprised to find that many of them had relatives that starved to death in the 1960s.

·  Likewise Hobbs and Salter gloss over the disastrous water development policies that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and destructive relocation of over ten million (but we haven’t time here to discuss this, convince me to take another group of WWU students to China next summer or take my fall course to learn more).

·  Notice that only a small proportion of China remains forested (how much? Keep this in mind when we study Japan.) but large areas are without significant vegetative cover – some due to entirely natural causes and others human causes.

·  In the video we will (or have) view about Nei Mongolia, we have some very good examples at attempts at improving agriculture. Unfortunately, Hobbs and Salter do not really do justice to the mixed results of many of these programs, but then how aware are we of the mixed nature of our own agriculture practices in the US?

·  Again on agricultural communes Hobbs and Salter tread very lightly, let me point out that at their height is when people were starving to death in China. And the “backyard steel furnaces” were extremely destructive on the environment and produced only what people generally referred to as “dog turds” not steel.

·  Although many industries did arrive in the countryside as a result of some past policies, this has been a mixed result (like many things). In some cases they did provide jobs for underemployed agricultural workers, but many current ones are among the most polluting in all of China (Why – take my class in the fall).

·  After 1978 what happened that caused a sudden 50% expansion in agricultural output during the 1980s and 1990s? What other factor when coupled with this increased the per capita food supply by 20%?

·  What percent of its consumption in grains like rice, corn, and wheat does China grow itself? When we read Brown’s book we will learn much about the future of this situation.

Inset Medical Geography

·  Might this be a modern example of a hearth area and diffusion?

·  Why is China such a good incubator for this type of disease?

·  By what modern means did it diffuse and how quickly?

·  What particular animal is the most likely origin host for this disease?

·  How dangerous is/was this disease and why?

·  What were the economic consequences? How close to the US did it get?

·  Do you think it could happen again?