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East Asia

Area	11,839,074 km
Population	1,575,784,500
Density	133 per km
Countries and Territories	P.R. China  Hong Kong  Japan  Macau  Mongolia  North Korea  South Korea Taiwan (ROC)
Languages and language families	Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and many others
Nominal GDP (2009)	$ 11.427 Trillion
GDP per capita (2009)	$ 7,300
Time zones	UTC +7:00 (Western Mongolia) to UTC +9:00 (Japan and Korean Peninsula)
Capital cities	Beijing Pyongyang Seoul Taipei Tokyo Ulan Bator
Other major cities	Busan Guangzhou  Hong Kong Kaohsiung  Macau Osaka Shanghai Yokohama (see list)

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East Asia
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	東亞 or 東亞細亞
Simplified Chinese	东亚 or 东亚细亚
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dōngyà or Dōng Yàxìyà Wade–Giles Tung-ya Wu Romanization ton ia Gan Romanization Tung1 nga3 Hakka Romanization dung a Yue: Cantonese Jyutping dung1 aa3 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Tang-a
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	Đông Á (Sino-Viet.) Á Đông (native)
Hán-Nôm	東亞 (Sino-Viet.) 亞東 (native)
Korean name
Hangul	동아시아/동아세아/동아
Hanja	東아시아/東亞細亞/東亞
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Dong Asia/Dong Asea/Dong A
Mongolian name
Mongolian Cyrillic	Зүүн Ази ᠵᠤᠨ ᠠᠵᠢ Züün Azi
Japanese name
Kanji	東亜細亜（東アジア）/東亜
Kana	ひがしアジア/とうあ
Kyūjitai	東亞細亞/東亞
Transcriptions Revised Hepburn Higashi Ajia/Tō-A Kunrei-shiki Higasi Azia/Tou-A
Russian name
Russian	Восточная Азия
Romanization	Vostochnaja Azija

Template:FixBunching Template:FixBunching East Asia or Eastern Asia (the latter form preferred by the United Nations) is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe.

More than 1.5 billion people, about 38 percent of the population of Asia or 22 percent of all the people in the world, live in geographic East Asia. This is about twice the population that Europe has. The region is one of the world's most populated places, with a population density of 133 inhabitants per square kilometre (340/sq mi), being about three times the world average of 45/km (120/sq mi). Using the UN subregion definitions, it ranks second in population only to Southern Asia.

Historically, many societies in East Asia have been part of the Chinese cultural sphere, and East Asian vocabulary and scripts are often derived from Classical Chinese and Chinese script. Sometimes Northeast Asia is used to denote Japan, North Korea, and South Korea.

Major religions include Buddhism (mostly Mahayana), Confucianism or Neo-Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese folk religion in China, Shinto in Japan, Shamanism in Korea, Mongolia and other indigenous populations of northern East Asia, and more recently Christianity in South Korea. The Chinese Calendar is the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived.

Uses of the term East Asia

The UN subregion of Eastern Asia and other common definitions of East Asia contain the entirety of the People's Republic of China (including all SARs and autonomous regions), Taiwan (officially known as the Republic of China), Japan, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), South Korea (Republic of Korea), and Mongolia.

Chinese speaking societies (including the cultures of mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), Japanese society, Korean society, and Vietnamese society are commonly seen as being encompassed by cultural East Asia:

Alternate definitions

There are mixed debates around the world whether these countries or regions should be considered in east Asia or not.

• The parts of China that are not historically dominated by Han Chinese: Tibet, Xinjiang (considered either East Asia or Central Asia or South Asia in the case of Tibet—here the primary question is cultural, with geography also at issue)
•  Vietnam (considered either East Asia or Southeast Asia—here the primary question is geographic)
• Siberia (considered either East Asia or North Asia—here the primary question is political, with culture and geography also at issue)

In business and economics, East Asia has been used to refer to a wide geographical area covering ten countries in ASEAN, People's Republic of China, Japan, South Korea, and the Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) for the purpose of economic and political regionalism and integration. The tendency of this usage, perhaps, started especially since the publication of World Bank on The East Asian Miracle in 1993 explaining the economic success of the Asian Tiger and emerging Southeast Asian economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand).}

In addition, this usage has also been driven by Asia-wide economic interconnectedness since the co-operation between ASEAN and its three dialogue partners was institutionalized under the ASEAN Plus Three Process (ASEAN+3 or APT) in 1997. The idea of East Asian Community arising from ASEAN+3 framework is also gradually shaping the term East Asia to cover more than greater China, Korea, and Japan. This usage however, is unstable: the East Asian Summit, for instance, includes India and Australia.

East Asia is considered to be a part of the Far East, which describes the region's geographical position in relation to Europe rather than its location within Asia. However, in contrast to the United Nations definition, East Asia commonly is used to refer to the eastern part of Asia, as the term implies. Observers preferring a broader definition of 'East Asia' often use the term Northeast Asia to refer to the greater China area, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, with Southeast Asia covering the ten ASEAN countries. This usage, which is increasingly widespread in economic and diplomatic discussion, is at odds with the historical meanings of both 'East Asia' and 'Northeast Asia'. The Council on Foreign Relations defines Northeast Asia as Japan and Korea.

Territory and region data

Demographics

Country or territory	Area km²	Population	Population density per km²	HDI (2007)	Capital
People's Republic of China	9,671,018	1,335,612,968	138	0.772	Beijing
Hong Kong	1,104	7,055,071	6,390	0.944	-
Japan	377,944	127,470,000	337	0.960	Tokyo
Macau	29	541,200	18,662	0.909	-
Mongolia	1,564,116	2,736,800	2	0.727	Ulan Bator
North Korea	120,540	23,906,000	198	0.766	Pyongyang
South Korea	100,140	50,062,000	500	0.937	Seoul
Tawian (ROC)	36,191	23,119,772	639	0.943	Taipei

Economy

Country or territory	GDP nominal millions of USD (2009)	GDP nominal per capita USD (2009)	GDP PPP millions of USD (2009)	GDP PPP per capita USD (2009)
People's Republic of China	4,908,982	3,678	8,765,240	6,567
Hong Kong	210,731	29,825	307,065	42,748
Japan	5,068,059	39,731	4,159,432	32,608
Macau	21,700	40,185	18,140	59,451
Mongolia	4,023	1,560	9,399	3,481
North Korea	27,820	1,159	40,000	1,800
South Korea	832,512	17,074	1,364,148	27,978
Tawian (ROC)	378,969	16,391	735,997	31,834

See also

• East Asian Ethnic Groups
• Economy of East Asia
• History of East Asia
• Cities of East Asia
• East Asia Summit
• East Asian Community
• East Asian Games
• East Asian studies
• East Asian languages
• East Asian calligraphy
• Four Asian Tigers
• Sinosphere
• Yakutia

Notes and references

1. The area figure is based on the combined areas of the People's Republic of China (including Hong Kong, Macau, Aksai Chin, and Trans-Karakoram Tract), Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) as listed at List of countries and outlying territories by total area.
2. The population figure is the combined populations of the People's Republic of China (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau), Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Republic of China (Taiwan) as listed at List of countries by population (last updated Feb 22, 2010).
3. ^ "East Asia". encarta. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. Retrieved 2008-01-12. East A·sia the countries, territories, and regions of China, Hong Kong, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Macau, and Taiwan. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. ^ , Britannica Online Encyclopedia, saying: "The present political boundaries of China, which include Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, and the northeastern provinces formerly called Manchuria, embrace a far larger area of East Asia than will be discussed here...."
5. Plateaus, National Geographic Society
6. East Asian Region - Tibet
7. Department of East Asian Studies, University of Helsinki
8. ^ Britannica Online Encyclopedia
9. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2004.03.13.html "Xinjiang: Central Asia or China?"
10. http://www.ceibs.edu/ase/Documents/rethinking.htm Rethinking Central Asia
11. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15095a.htm CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Turkestan
12. http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2008/05/22/china-reconnects-with-tajikistan.html China Invests in Central Asia Stability Through Tajikistan Xinjiang, a name meaning new territory in Mandarin, was militarily captured and annexed by China after World War II. Its 8 million residents are made up of mostly Muslim Turkic groups that include the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Kazakhs, and the Tajiks that profess affinity with Central Asia than with the local Han Chinese. refers to the indigenous people as being Central Asian
13. 9789622177901 Tredinnick, Jeremy and Christoph Baumer and Judy Bonavia. Xinjiang: China's Central Asia, -: Odyssey Publications, 2008.
14. Columbia University - "East Asian cultural sphere" "The East Asian cultural sphere evolves when Japan, Korea, and what is today Vietnam all sh are adapted elements of Chinese civilization of this period (that of the Tang dynasty), in particular Buddhism, Confucian social and political values, and literary Chinese and its writing system."
15. See, List of countries by population density
16. "Northeast Asia." Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved on August 10, 2009.
17. Chongho Kim, "Korean Shamanism", 2003 Ashgate Publishing
18. Andreas Anangguru Yewangoe, "Theologia crucis in Asia", 1987 Rodopi
19. "Background Note: South Korea". State. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2000-04-27. Christianity (49% of religious population) comprises of South Korea's major religion. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
20. ^ The Republic of China (ROC) has limited recognition within the international community as a sovereign state, see Political status of Taiwan Cite error: The named reference "ROC" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
21. Columbia University East Asian Cultural Sphere
22. R. Keith Schopper's East Asia: Identities and Change in the Modern World
23. Joshua A. Fogel (UC Santa Barbara/University of Indiana) Nationalism, the Rise of the Vernacular, and the Conceptualization of Modernization in East Asian Comparative Perspective
24. United Nations Environment Programme (mentions sinosphere countries) Approaches to Solution of Eutrophication
25. "Encarta Encyclopedia". Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
26. Discussed in Christopher M. Dent (2008), East Asian regionalism. London: Routledge, pp.1-8
27. Charles Harvie, Fukunari Kimura, and Hyun-Hoon Lee (2005), New East Asian regionalism. Cheltenham and Northamton: Edward Elgar, pp.3-6.
28. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (2006), Beyond Japan: the dynamics of East Asian regionalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp.1-33
29. "Northeast Asia." Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved on August 10, 2009.

External links

• High resolution map of East Asian region

• East Asia