Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Northeast Asian Politics final exam:

Requirement: Questions can and should be answered utilizing class material. Essays must firmly

stay within word limits. We will fail any exam that appears to have used ChatGPT or similar to

answer any part of this exam.

Essay : Maximum of 1250 words.

Please answer the following question. Be sure to refer to material presented in lecture, films,

section and readings in your answer. Provide examples to support your argument.

- To what extent have the U.S. alliance model and its policy of “strategic ambiguity” with

regard to Taiwan served as obstacles to the achievement of a peaceful and secure

Northeast Asia? In what ways have other regional actors (for example, Russia, North

Korea and/or China) threatened the security of the region? Are there any actions or

policies that might potentially reduce the current level of tension in the area? Choose at

least two Northeast Asian countries and suggest at least two things they could each do to

improve regional stability.

Short answer : 400-word maximum per answer; total of 1200 words. Please briefly discuss key

points related to three of the following topics. Be sure to refer to material presented in lecture,

films, section and readings in your answer. Provide brief examples to support your claims.

1. What aspects of China’s “Century of Humiliation” lead to China’s eventual western-style

economic reforms?

2. What is the developmental state? What are the main characteristics and forces that

distinguish it from the neoliberal market rational model?

3. Why are there no EU-like organizations that could institutionalize effective regional

cooperation on trade and security among the nations in NE Asia? How might the region

benefit from the development of stronger regional ties? Choose at least two of the

countries discussed in class (US; China; Japan; South Korea; North Korea; Taiwan) and

briefly consider what steps they could potentially take to improve regional stability.

The exam essays will be graded using the following rubric :

1. Quality of ideas; develops a position/argument that is well-supported does not just spit

back details from the course material, but engages the question in a thoughtful way.

2. Organization; well organized structure with a progression of ideas.

3. Accuracy; can have a point of view and/or challenge conventional wisdom, but facts must

be accurate and supportive

4. Examples; provides examples, citations from text, lecture, film clips, section, etc.

5. Shows familiarity with course materials and how they relate to the question.

http://nyti.ms/1AYBnCP

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

China’s ‘Silent Spring’ Moment? Why ‘Under the Dome’ Found a Ready Audience in China

By DANIEL K. GARDNER MARCH 18, 2015

It has been a dizzying few weeks for “Under the Dome,” the TED-like documentary about China’s overwhelming air pollution crisis produced and narrated by Chai Jing, a former investigative reporter at CCTV, China’s national television network. On Saturday, Feb. 28, the People’s Daily website and other outlets posted the film, along with an interview with Ms. Chai. The next day, the newly appointed minister of environmental protection, Chen Jining, praised the video as China’s “Silent Spring” moment and declared, “Chai Jing deserves our respect for drawing the public’s attention to the environment from a unique public health perspective.”

Then, two days later, the Shanghai Propaganda Department issued these instructions: “Media and websites of all types and levels ... must absolutely discontinue coverage of the documentary ‘Under the Dome’ and its creator.”

But even as the fate of Ms. Chai’s environmental exposé was beginning to shift, Premier Li Keqiang would tell the National People’s Congress on March 5, “Environmental pollution is a blight on people’s quality of life and a trouble that weighs on their hearts. We must fight it with all our might.”

Then the next day, Beijing ratcheted up its earlier order: “Video websites are to delete ‘Under the Dome.’ Take care to control related commentary.”

The very same day, President Xi Jinping, wanting to be emphatically clear about his stalwart commitment to the environment, said, “We are going to punish, with an iron hand, any violators who destroy ecology or the environment, with no exceptions.”

Confused? Why all the flip-flopping? In part, it shows that, contrary to what

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many outsiders assume, some in Beijing recognize that pollution has become a crisis of widespread popular concern and must be addressed. But, in the end, behind all the contradictory messages lies this reality: Party leaders fear the political consequences should environmentalism blossom into an organized national movement.

“Under the Dome” is powerful. For 104 minutes Chai Jing walks to and fro in front of a large screen, weaving graphs, statistics, vivid photographs, interviews and personal stories into an arresting narrative of China’s pollution crisis.

As others have noted, the documentary offers little in the way of new information. The audience hears that: Coal and cars are the main sources of pollution, at least 500,000 Chinese people die prematurely from cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory disease, the country has environmental regulations in abundance but enforcement is weak to nonexistent, the Ministry of Environmental Protection is sorely under-staffed and under-resourced, local officials throughout the country often turn a blind eye to polluting industries, and the powerful oil and gas industries — mostly state-owned — resist raising fuel standards as the higher costs of production, they fear, will fall on them.

But Ms. Chai is careful not to let the main issue get lost in a profusion of data; she gives the documentary a deeply personal twist, tying the story of China’s polluted air to the story of her own daughter’s health. It is a video that tugs at parental heartstrings.

By Monday, March 2, it had been viewed more than 100 million times on video portals like Youku and Tencent. And it was generating considerable chatter on social media sites as well; there were 280 million posts on Sina Weibo alone. Before it was taken down from Internet sites, more than 200 million Chinese had viewed it (out of approximately 600 million with Internet access). People were watching and talking.

This is not an adventure flick, sci-fi or porn. So why does a fact-based documentary on air pollution go viral? Some analysts have characterized “Under the Dome” as the beginning of China’s national conversation on pollution. But this misses the point: The public has already awakened. Events of the past two years have conspired to raise awareness of the pollution problem and its catastrophic effects on their health. When “Under the Dome” was posted online it found a ready audience.

Pollution, after all, has become personal — the daily smog, the face masks, the air filters, the no-school days, the constant coughs, the visits to the children’s

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hospitals. Hence the frequency with which people take to the streets to protest polluting factories and power plants. They have become motivated to learn about the toxic stew that is threatening their health and, still more, the health of their children: What’s in this stew, what are its sources, what are its effects, and how can they protect themselves? They want to learn the answers from someone they respect. Chai Jing fits that bill.

The critical light that the documentary throws on the government, I suspect, also contributes to its viral appeal. The public takes for granted that official corruption is endemic. To hear Chai Jing recount stories that expose official corruption is not only affirming, but perhaps cathartic as well. And when she wonders why the government does not effectively implement environmental laws and enforce those already on the books, the question strikes a chord — for many viewers have been asking themselves the same things. The psychologist Tang Yinghong writes provocatively of the video’s attraction: “When people watched, forwarded, and discussed, it wasn’t about updating concepts, but rather about venting.”

“Under the Dome,” then, may have provided a safe “public” space for Chinese citizens to vent collectively about government corruption and incompetence in addressing the toxic air they breathe each and every day.

It is just this mass appeal that may explain the censors’ abrupt turn against the video. The government has shown a tolerance for online protests and even street protests — as long as they remained localized, Nimby (not-in-my-backyard) protests. What the Beijing leadership saw in “Under the Dome” was a video capable of galvanizing 200 million to 300 million people and giving them common cause.

Writing on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 2006, Mikhail Gorbachev declared: “The Chernobyl disaster, more than anything else, opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”

We can be confident that China’s leaders have taken note of his remarks and are doing all they can to ensure that widespread rage over pollution is not the cause of their undoing.

There is another lesson that can be learned from the history of “Under the Dome.” The government — again, contrary to what many seem to believe — is by no means monolithic. There are competing state ministries and competing interests

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within the party. “Under the Dome” threw its weight behind those ministries and interests that favor a definitive shift away from economic development or “G.D.P. worship,” and toward stewardship of the environment. I would not dismiss the possibility that the Ministry of Environmental Protection actively promoted production of the video, hoping to pressure the State Council, China’s cabinet, into increasing what is now its paltry funding.

But powerful ministries and agencies like the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance may well have been less enthusiastic about a video that makes economic growth the nation’s environmental bogeyman and chastises government-owned enterprises like Sinopec for putting its interests ahead of the health and well-being of the Chinese people. Influential officials were poised to withdraw the video if it became a problem — and it did.

Last year Premier Li declared a “war against pollution.” The Chinese government is dead serious about this war. But to win it, industry, officials at every level and the people will all need to be on board. Banning “Under the Dome” is not going to bring people together in support of the government’s cause; more likely, it will simply accelerate the very discontent it was intended to stop.

Daniel K. Gardner is the Dwight W. Morrow professor of history at Smith College. He is completing a book on environmental pollution in China. A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 19, 2015, in The International New York Times.

© 2015 The New York Times Company

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