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PATHS TOM ODERNISATION 165 The 1964 Olympics held in Tokyo marked a symbolic coming of age. In much the same way the network of high-speed Shinkansen or bullet trains, started in 1964, which ran at 200 miles per hour (now it is 300 miles per hour) have come to represent the ability of the Japanese to use advanced technologies to produce better and cheaper goods. The 1960s saw the growth of civil society movements as industrialisation had been pushed with utter disregard to its effect on health and the environment. Cadmium poisoning, which led to a painful disease, was an early indicator, followed by mercury poisoning in Minamata in the 1960s and problems caused by air pollution in the early 1970s. Grass-roots pressure groups began to demand recognition of these problems as well as compensation for the victims. Government action and new legal regulations helped to improve conditions. From the mid- 1980s there has been an increasing decline in interest Tokyo before and after in environmental issues as Japan enacted some of the strictest the Second World War. environmental controls in the world. Today, as a developed country it faces the challenge of using its political and technological capabilities to maintain its position as a leading world power. CHINA The modern history of China has revolved around the question of how to regain sovereignty, end the humiliation of foreign occupation and bring about equality and development. Chinese debates were marked by the views of three groups. The early reformers such as Kang Youwei (1858-1927) or Liang Qichao (1873-1929) tried to use traditional ideas in new and different ways to meet the challenges posed by the West. Second, republican revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the republic, were inspired by ideas from Japan and the West. The third, the Communist Party of China (CCP) wanted to end age-old inequalities and drive out the foreigners. The beginning of modern China can be traced to its first encounter with the West in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Jesuit missionaries introduced Western sciences such as astronomy and mathematics. Limited though its immediate impact was, it set in motion events that gathered momentum in the nineteenth century when Britain Reprint 2026-27