9781422274002

9781422274002

A S I A : F A C T S & F I G U R E S

ASIAN COUNTRIES TODAY

ASIAN COUNTRIES TODAY

Afghanistan Asia: Facts & Figures Bangladesh India Pakistan

China Indonesia Japan Malaysia

Philippines Singapore South Korea Thailand Vietnam

A S I A : F A C T S & F I G U R E S

ASIAN COUNTRIES TODAY

JACQUELINE HAVELKA

MASON CREST

MIAMI

MASON CREST PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2023 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-4410-4 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-4430-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-7400-2

Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress

Developed and Produced by National Highlights Inc. Editor: Susan Uttendorfsky Interior and cover design: Jana Rade

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Map of Asia................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Asia Today................................................................. 9 Chapter 2: The Geography & Landscape of Asia ...................... 17 Chapter 3 : The History of Asia....................................................33 Chapter 4 : The Countries of Asia............................................... 41 Chapter 5: People, Culture & Capital Cities.............................. 65 Chapter 6: The Economy of Asia................................................ 71 Chapter 7: The Future................................................................ 83 Series Glossary of Key Terms...................................................... 90 Further Reading & Internet Resources....................................... 92 Organizations to Contact............................................................ 93 Index............................................................................................ 94 Author’s Biography & Credits...................................................... 96

KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR: WORDS TO UNDERSTAND: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. SIDEBARS: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more! TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there.

RESEARCH PROJECTS: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis.

SERIES GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

M A P

O F

A S I A

IRAN

MYANMAR

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Countries Featured in This Book Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia China (Dependencies and Territories of China) –Hong Kong –Macao –Taiwan India Indonesia Iran Japan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Laos Malaysia Maldives Mongolia Myanmar Nepal North Korea Pakistan Philippines Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Tajikistan Thailand Timor-Leste Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Vietnam

NORTH KOREA

JAPAN

7

Tokyo skyline and Mount Fuji, Japan.

atoll: a ring-shaped island made of coral infanticide: killing a child within one year of birth species: a group of similar living things in a scientific classification and is made up of individuals able to produce offspring with one another sustainable: able to be maintained with minimal or renewable resources

8 ASIA: FACTS & FIGURES

C H A P T E R

ASIA TODAY

1

E ver wonder what it would be like to live on Earth’s biggest and most populated continent? This is Asia, the world’s largest and most diverse continent. Asia is vast, accounting for 30 percent of the earth’s entire land area. Asia is so large that it has both the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean as boundaries. Asia also has the longest coastline and encompasses thirty countries, including China and India. Asia has the most plant and animal species on Earth, too, and much of the continent is blessed with precious natural resources like copper, silver, forests, and oil. Asia’s farmland is fertile and its waters are filled with fish. As of June 2019, Asia accounted for 60 percent of the world’s population. Some regions of Asia are extremely overpopulated, while other areas remain barely populated. Shanghai, in China, is the most populated Asian city, with 80 + million people living there, while the Maldives has less than 400,000 residents total on its twenty-six island atolls . The people of Asia are extremely diverse in languages, religion, and living conditions, and archaeologists have learned that the most human adaptation occurred in Asia.

Asia is generally divided into four parts: • East Asia encompasses China, Japan, and Korea • South Asia includes India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

• Southeast Asia covers the areas of Myanmar, the Philippines, and Malaysia • The Middle East is also in Asia, and comprises Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Israel, and other Arab countries

ASIA TODAY 9

Parts of Asia, like Singapore and Hong Kong, have booming economies, and others have state-of-the-art and futuristic technology. For example, the Toyota Corporation revealed in January 2020 that it will build a sustainable city of the future near Mount Fuji in Japan. About 2,000 people will initially live in the city, which is planned to completely run on hydrogen fuel cells and use robotics, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence. Poverty Asia has a fast-growing economy and is noted for its amazing business ventures, like China’s Beijing Daxing International Airport, which has the world’s largest terminal, designed to handle over 70 million passengers per year. The airport took less than five years to build and cost $17 billion. On the other hand, Asia is also a continent experiencing extreme poverty. Nearly half of its people live on less than $2 per day. After Africa, Asia is the second poorest continent. Not all Asian countries are poor, but in several nations, there are wide gaps in economic conditions. Several factors contribute to poverty in Asia.

There is a widening gap between the rich and poor throughout Asia.

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Science & Technology

The first is Asia’s enormous population. The continent hosts nearly 60 percent of the entire world’s population, so resources and food are scarce. Nearly 70 percent of Asians are hungry. Agricultural land for growing food has decreased as the population has increased; the land is being urbanized. As a result, food prices have greatly increased, creating food insecurity for the population. Several countries also have weak governmental policies that further add to food insecurity and poverty. Natural disasters like floods and earthquakes are common in Asia. In

India and China have historically been noted for their advancements in science and technology. Today, the advancements in those industries vary depending on the country. Today, Japan is notable for its technological achievements, particularly in electronics and automobiles. Recently, China and India have made significant advancements.

fact, half of the world’s natural disasters take place in Asian countries. Some families lose everything they have, maybe more than once, and live in poverty for the rest of their lives. Lack of health care is a huge factor that further leads to malnutrition. Almost 70 percent of the world’s malnourished children live in Asia. Women are vulnerable because countless Asian countries don’t provide health care to women. Lack of education also leads to poverty. UNESCO reports that one-third of all adults in South and West Asia cannot read or write, and frequently, children lack the basic skills necessary to even try to get a higher education. Asian populations in general don’t believe in education for girls, so there is a huge gender gap. Only about 60 percent of young women across Asia can read and write. Unfortunately, these causes of poverty are all interrelated, and a myriad of problems need to be fixed before all Asians can rise up out of poverty. Infanticide Two million baby girls go “missing” each year in China and India. Female babies are sometimes aborted, abandoned to die, or even killed as newborns. Countries like Nepal and South Korea share this cultural tradition of infanticide , which has Hindu and Confucian origins.

ASIA TODAY 11

Even though poverty rates have fallen rapidly in the last thirty years, will extreme poverty ever be eradicated?

In Hindu traditions, women are viewed as lower than men. They aren’t allowed to inherit property or carry the family name, and a woman’s social status is entirely dependent on her husband. In an ancient Hindu belief, a woman whose husband has died (becoming a widow) is expected to throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre and burn to death rather than return to her pre-marriage family. This tradition is called sati . Baby girls are seen as thieves who cost the family money to raise—when a daughter grows up, she requires a dowry to bring to her husband. For centuries, sons have been given additional and better food, health care, and education than daughters. Families that feel they have unnecessary daughters often smother or strangle a newborn baby girl. The teachings of the Chinese scholar Confucius were very similar to Hinduism. He taught that men were superior to women and that girls are a burden to raise. When girls marry in China or South Korea, they are considered lost to a new family. However, Chinese women do not have to provide a dowry.

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One might think that modern governments and technology would improve this situation, but this has not been the case so far. China had a one-child policy that began in 1979 and officially ended on January 1, 2016. Medical technology, like ever-improving ultrasounds, makes it easier for parents to find out the baby’s gender and abort girls. Some Chinese parents who discover they are having a girl will abort the baby, kill it at birth, or abandon her to die. Although China formally altered its policy in 2016 to allow parents a second child if their first child was a girl, it seems as if parents still don’t want to incur the expense of raising two children. This has led to tremendous gender imbalance in these countries. For instance, India has 50 million more men than women. In China there might be 140 men for every 100 women. There are not enough women for the men to marry, meaning the sons are unable to have children to carry on the family name. Crimes and violence against women have also risen; rape and domestic abuse are common, and women are killed for not giving birth to sons.

China’s one-child policy meant that boys were wanted more than girls. This led to an imbalance between the sexes.

ASIA TODAY 13

Human trafficking is a huge problem, particularly in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Some families go so far as to kidnap girls from neighboring Asian nations, like Cambodia or Vietnam, to give their son a wife. For decades, South Korean men far outnumbered women. It is very common to see families with a 20-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, meaning there were countless baby girls aborted or killed in between. Some social norms are slowly changing. South Korea has greatly changed its policies, allowing genders to have equality in status, and women have plentiful work opportunities. Many newer South Korean leaders have been women. Sons in Asian countries have generally abandoned the practice of caring for elderly parents. As it is left to the daughters now, they are becoming valued in society. Human Trafficking In 2019, Thailand rescued nearly 2,000 human trafficking victims, three times the number from 2018. These women and children are migrants from nearby Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar who come to work in Thailand. In all, Thailand has about 5 million migrants that comprise 10 percent of the country’s workforce. Some are

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