Northeast Asia

Northeast Asia, sometimes Northeastern Asia, is a subregion of Asia that can be defined any of four ways:

1. The region bounded roughly by the Great Wall in the South, Lake Baikal in the West, the tundra in the North, and the Pacific Ocean in the East. This conception of the region draws attention to cultural and linguistic connections between the Mongols, the Manchus, the Koreans and other indigenous ethnic groups in the region, and to the contestation over the region between China, Russia and Japan since the 17th century.

2. The far eastern peninsula of the Asian continent, now entirely within Russia, especially in the context of its anthropological, biological and geological connections across the Bering Strait with Alaska.

3. Japan and Korea. This usage was adopted by the United States State Department in 1945 and is used by the Association for Asian Studies.

4. China, Japan and Korea. This somewhat general usage is synonymous with the most common meaning of the term East Asia but has been adopted in response to the extension of the meaning of East Asia in diplomatic circles to include Southeast Asia and sometimes, though not very accurately even India, e.g. the East Asian Summit.

India, Bangladesh, Nepal Bhutan and Pakistan (grouping based on ethnic and religio-cultural similarities i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism as well as the Dravidian phenotype) however would be clearer defined with the term West Asia with East Asia referring to ASEAN +3 which encompasses North East Asia AND South East Asia.

5. In ASEAN+3 these countries China, Japan and Korea are considered the '+3' portion of the grouping of ASEAN and are nations and cultures strongly influenced by Confucian Philosophy. North East Asians are fair with yellow tinted skin. The ASEAN South East Asian archipelago region, also Nusantara, is distinct and typified by brown skinned Khmer-Austronesian Animist peoples who have nominally adopted into Middle Eastern Muslim cultures. Countries such as Brunei, Borneo, Phillipines, Indonesia and Malaysia are considered part of South East Asia.

Between these two regions is Indo-China, which consists of Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, nominally Animist-Buddhist regions, skin colouration varying between that of the three regions, North East Asia, West Asia and South East Asia; caused from both climate and interracial mixing from proximity to both regions.