Far East, East, Northeast, Southeast: Dividing Asia

Looking at East Asia, or the Far East, further distinctions are often made between East Asian cultures: Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. Southeast Asia includes all the countries on the Asian continent south of The People’s Republic of China and east of Myanmar. Sometimes the island nations adjoining the Malaysian peninsula (including Malaysia) are also included, but even so they are often classified separately as Island Southeast Asia and are felt to be culturally different than the mainland. Northeast Asia includes the People’s Republic of China, Japan, the Koreas and Taiwan. Russia is excluded because its people are not regarded as Asian. Even so, the native population of Eastern Russia is genetically similar with other Northeast Asian populations.

These geographically inspired cultural subdivisions were made to describe assumptions about the relatedness of cultures within Northeast and Southeast Asia. In many ways these groupings seem accurate, Northeast Asia has a very significant and documented history of cultural influence from China. Southeast Asia has also been influenced by China an also had significant influence from India. However one must keep in mind that when these divisions were first made they were influenced by some myths and assumptions about culture. Despite these factors this thesis uses these just mentioned cultural groups for comparison with previous research. More specifically, the focus is on Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures and comparisons with Western

culture are made.

This section showed the common subdivisions of East Asia into north and south units. The next section goes on to examine the large Chinese population and clarifies the definition of Chinese culture.