Fabrizio Eva

China and Japan: Culture, economics, and geopolitics in the quest for a leading international role

The Western view of China and Japan is often based on a perception that they are both Confucian and, therefore, are more similar than is actually the case. Although both do share some fundamental characteristics of Asian culture, certain unique features of each, particularly at the level of social relationships and cultural landmarks, make them quite different. Analysing what these features are allows us to understand what influence they have on personal choices and on the decisions of leaders on important issues in these countries. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–99 can be taken as a useful acid test for evaluating the different decision‐making capacities of the Chinese and Japanese leaders. Currency devaluation, exchange rate intervention, banking system restructuring, economic reforms, and responses to international pressure were the main areas in which government action took place. Interpreting the decisions made in these areas from a geographical‐cultural perspective provides a solid basis for analysing geopolitical dynamics and the ‘global’ prospects of the two most important nations of the Far East.

Social Movements are Political Movements. What's Geopolitics?

Human groups, regardless of how they are organised, are dynamic systems that operate according to accepted customs. What form and degree of ritualism these customs assume is determined by local culture in the broad sense. Successful works of a theoretical nature are generally the product of intellectual customs that are acceptable and, therefore, lie within the boundaries of the dominant cultural framework. Satori, or ideas that break with convention, emerge from groups, movements or individuals outside the power structures that control the collective consciousness. They are quite rare. Are the examples presented in the article ‘Geopolitics as a Social Movement’ and the theories it expounds satori? Can we call a vision of Europe founded on a Christian religious ‘revelation’ a satori? The geopolitical vision of other cultures, such as China, appear more of a satori to us. Take for example the interest created in the West by the historic book of strategy and the more recent volume on asymmetrical war. In their observations, Grundy-Warr and Sidaway remind us – and in the West we always need reminding – that ‘other’ cultural visions exist that have millenniaold traditions of thought linked to specific and autonomous places, which are themselves the result of horizontal and vertical ‘social’ changes. These dynamic combinations of place–language–history and culture were what Reclus called genre de vie, a term he used in a very open and flexible sense: absence of geographic determinism, absence of behaviours strictly reflecting ethnicity or region, and absence of socio-economic ideals considered better than others. But let us return to the question of the propounding of new visions. Were the ideas of Ratzel, Mahan, Mackinder, Bowman, and Spykman satori relative to then contemporary thought? Perhaps only Ratzel offered an important reframing, given that he linked political geographic thought (of academia and those in charge) to the soil–people–political structure triad. In effect, however, his was an internal reframing of a concept of power over territory that was closely aligned with the ideas of empire and colonialism, while he himself was a descendent of the absolutism of Hegel.