GE350 World Geography
Lesson 3 Assignment 3

China – “The Middle Kingdom”

China in Mandarin Chinese in called Zhangguo, this really means “Middle Kingdom” when it is translated into English. The term Zhanggou originated from the Zhou dynasty’s belief that China was the center of civilizations in there part of the world, in which they truly were. They were not aware that in the western hemisphere of the world there were civilizations as well. It was not until the 1900’s that they firmly believed that they were the center of the world and what was surrounding them were savages. The term middle kingdom that China had adopted was surrounded by a firm belief. One of the biggest ones was on how they worked together and contributed much to their modern attitude towards the global economy. Most believe that China was slow to industrialize. That it could have done so a lot faster. Eventually all of those developed nations shifted from working on agriculture to skilled manufacturers who worked in facilities. The only thing that seemed to hold China back was the fact that there policies favored agriculture. Working with their hands doing manual labor on the land had always been good to them. Many great historians give credit to the different belief systems that both China and Europe, their late arrival into industrialization against that of Britain and other European countries. The part of Chinas main beliefs that held true even to this day is that of family. Traditionally you find more families in China Working together than while farming and such which led to why they were so successful in the agriculture part of their economy, and why it has stuck around for so long. The industrialization of China did occur on a significant scale during the 1950’s. During what is known as the great leap forward, this plan was used from 1958-1961. It was used to transform China from an agriculturally led economy that relied heavily on peasant farmers and independent variables that were beyond human control (such as the weather), into what was a modern communist society through the process known as industrialization. The one major back lash to all of this growth and advancement was Chinas forever growing population. There are a few factors that contribute to