A History of East Asia From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century

Much of the foreign investment that has fueled China’s post-reform economic boom has come from overseas Chinese people, with Hong Kong serving as China’s largest single source of foreign direct investment. In addition, there is extensive sharing of popular culture throughout the Chinese-speaking world. Hong Kong, a British colony since 1842, was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under the formula “one country, two systems” – supposedly allowing Hong Kong a continued degree of autonomy. But a controversial extradition agreement in 2019 sparked mass protests, which Beijing reacted to in 2020 by imposing a new National Security Law that brought Hong Kong more firmly under control. Taiwan, meanwhile, became the last refuge for the Chinese Nationalist Party after it lost the Civil War to the Communists in 1949. In the 1980s–1990s, opposition political parties were legalized, and Taiwan evolved into a genuine multiparty democracy. Because Beijing insists that Taiwan is a renegade province that must be recovered eventually, and because Taiwan is a flourishing democracy that now produces more than 60 percent of all the world’s computer chips, Taiwan is a place of great global strategic concern.