East Asia Area 11,839,074 km21 Population 1,575,784,5002 Density 133 per km2 Countries and Territories  China  Hong Kong  Japan  Macau  Mongolia  North Korea  South Korea  Taiwan 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)

East Asia Chinese name Traditional Chinese 東亞 Simplified Chinese 东亚 Transliterations Gan - Romanization Tung1 nga3 Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Dōngyà - Wade–Giles Tung1-ya3 Min - Hokkien POJ Tang-a Cantonese - Jyutping dung1 aa3 Japanese name Kanji 東亜細亜/東亜 Kana ひがしアジア/とうあ Kyūjitai 東亞細亞/東亞 Transliterations - Revised Hepburn Higashi Ajia/Tō-A - Kunrei-shiki Higasi Azia/Tou-A Korean name Hangul 동아시아/동아세아/동아 Hanja 東아시아/東亞細亞/東亞 Mongolian name Mongolian Зүүн Ази ᠵᠤᠨ ᠠᠵᠢ Züün Azi Russian name Russian Восточная Азия Romanization Vostochnaja Azija

East Asia or Eastern Asia (the latter form preferred by the United Nations) is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical³ or cultural⁴ terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km² (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 /km² (120 /sq mi).⁵ 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.⁶

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 Asia⁷⁸, and more recently Christianity⁹ 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 definitions³ of East Asia contain the entirety of the People's Republic of China¹⁰ (including all SARs and autonomous regions), Taiwan (officially known as the Republic of China)¹¹, Japan, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), South Korea (Republic of Korea), and Mongolia³.

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:^12131415

Alternate definitions

Some^who? consider the following countries or regions as part of East Asia, while others^who? do 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^161718192021—here the primary question is cultural, with geography also at issue)
•  Vietnam^{citation needed}(considered either East Asia or Southeast Asia—here the primary question is geographic)
• Siberia, Russia ²²(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^{citation needed}, People's Republic of China, Japan, South Korea, and the Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan)¹¹ for the purpose of economic and political regionalism and integration^{dubious – discuss}. 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).^{citation needed}}

In addition, this usage has also been driven^{says who?} 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'.²³²⁴²⁵ The Council on Foreign Relations defines Northeast Asia as Japan and Korea.²⁶

Territory and region data

Demographics

Country or territory	Area km²	Population	Population density per km²	HDI (2007)	Capital
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	-	-
Mongolia	1,564,116	2,736,800	2	0.727	Ulan Bator
North Korea	120,540	23,906,000	198	-	Pyongyang
South Korea	100,140	50,062,000	500	0.937	Seoul
Taiwan	36,191	23,119,772	639	0.943	Taipei

Economy

Country or territory	GDP nominal millions of USD (2009)	GDP PPP millions of USD (2009)	GDP PPP per capita USD (2009)
China	4,911,000	8,767,000	6,546
Hong Kong	210,730	301,300	42,574
Japan	5,073,000	4,141,000	32,817
Macau	21,700	18,140	59,451
Mongolia	4,212	10,480	3,567
North Korea	27,820	40,000	1,800
South Korea	800,300	1,343,000	27,791
Taiwan	379,400	693,200	29,829

See also

Compare Regions of Asia described by UN:      North Asia      Central Asia      Southwest Asia      South Asia      East Asia      Southeast Asia

• East Asian Ethnic Groups
• 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

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: East Asia

Look up east asia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• High resolution map of East Asian region

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