Asian history: major periods and developments

Asian

History is largely a story of power and subjugation. Being unfree and disempowered as been unfortunately normative, which is why the last vestiges of what Dahl, Nexo and Prendergast call "unfreedom" stand out in the modern era. North Korea is perhaps the most potent and extreme example of unfreedom in the world. As Daniel Gordon shows in the documentary feature A State of Mind, the people of North Korea blame "imperial America" for problems originating within the dysfunctional power structure of their own authoritarian regime. However, the North Korean regime did not originate or evolve in isolation. Global forces and powers, as well as more specific events have aided and abetted North Korea directly or indirectly.

Even in Western democracies, the degree to which the average person is free is variable, due to the structures and institutions that govern a capitalist society. The people of the United States pride themselves on choosing their own government, and yet have no real control over what that government does. People in power and the institutions they form are the primary movers and shakers in history. The extent to which Eastern and Western leaders alike have contributed to global unfreedom is vast. The people of North Korea as well as their Chinese neighbors would be able to recognize that there is mutual complicity in their respective oppression.

As Waley-Cohen points out in The Sextants of Beijing, China had resisted engaging with the west for several centuries of its existence, preferring an isolationist foreign policy and an insular worldview. The Age of Imperialism shifted global balances of power to a degree that China could not fail to recognize, but it was not until the eighteenth century that China would reckon with the new world order. The resulting series of trade agreements and treaties were often one-sided, skewed in favor of Western powers like Great Britain. In a stunning series of backlash events, China determined that imperial foreign powers were not serving its best interest. Communist ideology fused with Confucian values during the Twentieth Century. Subsequent experiences of unfreedom among the Chinese people cannot, however, be compared to the degree to which the people of North Korea are unfree. Just as there are degrees of power, there are also degrees of freedom.

Western powers cannot be blamed any more for China's unfreedom as for North Korea's unfreedom. The effects of foreign trade and Christian missionary activity in China did not amount to full-scale colonization. China did well resisting colonialism and imperialism. Likewise, the gates to China's economic markets have opened quite wide, enabling China's economy to flourish. The growth of the Chinese economy has been of great benefit its people, which cannot be considered fully unfree. Moreover, freedom is in many ways a Western concept and a Western value. Imposing Western values on Chinese society is one of the problems, one of the reasons for China's preference for clinging to its own norms and values.

Freedom to think, love, have a family, and earn a livelihood can all be considered central. These are freedoms enjoyed by the vast majority of people in China, but not North Korea. While China's restriction on the Internet can be said to restrict freedom of thought, there is no whole scale Interne ban, and furthermore, there are ways of accessing the entirety of content on the Internet by breaking through the Great Firewall. Many North Koreans do not have electricy, let alone access to the Internet. Loving is a freedom that can be practiced regardless of politics, and depends more on the individual and his or her morality than on any external circumstances. Shin Dong-hyuk had the freedom to love his mother enough to save her life, but chose instead a path of brutal selfishness and moral decay. His was a personal decision, born of the universal freedom to love, or not. Granted, the story of Shin Dong-hyuk shows that concentration camps impede all freedoms, even the most basic freedom to make judicious moral choices. It is likely that the unique circumstances of Camp 14, coupled with what starvation and torture does to the human brain, are what led Shin Dong-hyuk to make the choices he did during his life. Because he escaped, Shin Dong-hyuk is able to express himself in ways that he never could have had he remained in North Korea.

Having a family is a freedom afforded to most of the residents of North Korea, and to residents of China. A lesser known unfreedom is the freedom to choose not to have a family. Most women in the world are unfree because they do not have the ability to choose whether or not to have a family. Even when they are not conscripted into child marriage and can choose their own life partner, as they even have the ability to do in North Korea as shown in State of Mind, women worldwide are denied the essential freedom of self-determination. Women and men are both unfree when it comes to financial security and livelihood. The North Korean government officially delineates three classes of society. Although these three classes are deemed equal in theory, in practice they are most certainly not. The farmer class suffered greatly during the "arduous march" period of starvation. Farmers do not have the opportunity for upward social mobility or self-improvement through career opportunities in the city. In China, peasants do occasionally exercise the freedom to move to cities for employment but may be constricted by their lack of financial or social capital. Even in the West, freedom of livelihood is mitigated by one's social status, access to financing, and level of social connectedness.