This textbook provides a survey of East Asia during the Cold War from 1945 to 1991. Focusing on the persistence and flexibility of its culture and tradition when confronted by the West and the US, this book investigates how they intermesh to establish the nations that have entered the modern world.
Through the use of newly declassified Communist sources, the narrative helps students form a better understanding of the origins and development of post-WWII East Asia. The analysis demonstrates how East Asia’s position in the Cold War was not peripheral but, in many key senses, central. The active role that East Asia played, ultimately, turned this main Cold War battlefield into a "buffer" between the United States and the Soviet Union. Covering a range of countries, this textbook explores numerous events, which took place in East Asia during the Cold War, including:
- The occupation of Japan,
- Civil war in China and the establishment of Taiwan,
- The Korean War,
- The Vietnam War,
- China’s Reforming Movement.
Moving away from Euro-American centric approaches and illuminating the larger themes and patterns in the development of East Asian modernity, The Cold War in East Asia is an essential resource for students of Asian History, the Cold War and World History.
Introduction: Understanding Modern East Asia
Part One War and Revolution
1. Imperial Powers and pre-WWII Japan
2. The Asian-Pacific War (1937-1945)
3. Cold War Japan: Occupation and Reform (1945-1951)
4. The Nationalists vs. the Communists in China
5. The People’s Republic and Taiwan (1949-1957)
Part Two The East vs. the West
6. The Korean War (1950-1953)
7. China and the First Indochina War
8. New Japan (1952-1996)
9. The Communist Cold War and Vietnam (1958-1975)
Part Three From Bi-polar, Triangle, to Global
10. The Cultural Revolution and Sino-US Rapprochement
11. China’s Reforming Movement
12. Two Koreas and the Sino-Vietnamese Border War
13. Surviving the Cold War: China’s Globalization
Conclusion: East Asia in the Twenty-first Century
Biography
Xiaobing Li is Professor and Chair in the Department of History and Director of the Western Pacific Institute at the University of Central Oklahoma.
