In the West, it is regularly taught that Greece (specifically Athens) is the birthplace of democracy, and that examples such as the Roman republic suggest the Western republican tradition can be traced back to antiquity. Are there any examples of Asian countries before colonization where a country was a republic or a democracy instead of a monarchy? I was specifically thinking East Asia (China, Japan, South-East Asia) but other regions (India, Middle East) would be fine as well.
Do you mean precolonial or pre-European entirely? I ask because the kongsi federations founded by Chinese emigrants in Southeast Asia, of which the Lanfang Republic is the most famous, existed for centuries before the Dutch properly took control over them. But they were founded well after the 16th century, and the Dutch interacted with them from pretty much their inception.