East Asian people (East Asians or Northeast Asians) are the people from
East Asia, which consists of
China,
Japan,
Mongolia,
North Korea,
South Korea, and
Taiwan.[1] The total population of all countries within this region is estimated to be 1.677 billion and 21% of the world's population in 2020.[2] However, large East Asian diasporas, such as the
Chinese,
Japanese,
Korean, and
Mongolian diasporas, as well as diasporas of other East Asian ethnic groups, mean that the 1.677 billion does not necessarily represent an accurate figure for the number of East Asian people worldwide.[3]
Throughout the ages, the greatest
influence on East Asia
historically has been from
China, where the span of its cultural influence is generally known as the
Sinosphere laid the foundation for East Asian civilization.[18] Chinese culture not only served as the foundation for its own society and civilization, but for also that of its East Asian neighbors, Japan and Korea.[19] The knowledge and ingenuity of Chinese civilization and the classics of Chinese literature and culture were seen as the foundations for a civilized life in East Asia. China served as a vehicle through which the adoption of Confucian ethical philosophy, Chinese calendar systems, political and legal systems, architectural style, diet, terminology, institutions, religious beliefs,
imperial examinations that emphasized a knowledge of Chinese classics, political philosophy and culture, as well as historically sharing a common
writing system reflected in the histories of
Japan and
Korea.[20][21][22][18][23][24][25] The relationship between China and its cultural influence on East Asia has been compared to the historical influence of
Greco-Roman civilization on
Europe and the
Western World.[24] Major characteristics exported by China towards Japan and Korea include shared vocabulary based on Chinese script, as well as similar social and moral philosophies derived from
Confucianist thought.[25][23][26]
Han characters and
Written Chinese became the fundamental linguistic basis as well as the unifying linguistic feature in East Asian writing system as the vehicle for exporting Chinese culture to its East Asian neighbors.[26] Chinese characters became the unifying language of bureaucratic politics and religious expression in East Asia.[26] The Chinese script was passed on first to
Korea and then to
Japan, where Han characters acted as the major underlying fundamental linguistic basis constituent of the
Japanese writing system. In Korea, however,
Sejong the Great invented the
hangul alphabet, which has since been used as the fundamental linguistic basis for formulating the
Korean language.[27] In Japan, much of the
Japanese language is written in
hiragana,
katakana in addition to
Chinese characters.[25] In Mongolia, the script used there is the
Cyrillic script along with the
Mongolian script system.
A review paper by Melinda A. Yang (in 2022) summarized and concluded that a distinctive "Basal-East Asian population" referred to as 'East- and Southeast Asian lineage' (ESEA); which is ancestral to modern East Asians,
Southeast Asians,
Polynesians, and
Siberians, originated in
Mainland Southeast Asia at ~50,000 BC, and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards respectively. This ESEA lineage gave rise to various sublineages, and is also ancestral to the
Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers of Southeast Asia and the ~40,000 year old
Tianyuan lineage found in
Northern China, but already differentiated and distinct from European-related and Australasian-related lineages, found in other regions of prehistoric Eurasia. The ESEA lineage trifurcated from an earlier "eastern non-African" (ENA) or "East-Eurasian" meta-population, which also contributed to the formation of Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI) as well as to Australasians.[28]
The majority of East Asians have the
ABCC11 gene (80-95%), which greatly reduces body odor and codes for dry-type earwax. It is believed that this reduction in body odor may be an adaptation to colder climates by ancient Northeast Asian ancestors, although this is not definitively proven.
Alcohol flush reaction is the characteristic physiological facial flushing response to drinking alcohol experienced by 36% of East Asians.[29][30][31] Around 80% of East Asians carry an
allele of the gene coding for the enzyme
alcohol dehydrogenase called
ADH1B*2, which results in the alcohol dehydrogenase
enzyme converting alcohol to toxic
acetaldehyde more quickly than other gene variants common outside of East Asia.[32][33] According to the analysis by
HapMap project, another allele responsible for the flush reaction, the rs671 (ALDH2*2) of the
ALDH2 is rare among Europeans and Sub-Saharan Black Africans, while 30% to 50% of people of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ancestry have at least one ALDH2*2 allele.[34] The reaction has been associated with lower than average rates of alcoholism, possibly due to its association with adverse effects after drinking alcohol.[32]
^There are no universally accepted and precise definitions of the terms "
ethnic group" and "
nationality". In the context of East Asian ethnography in particular, the terms ethnic group, people, nationality and ethno-linguistic group, are mostly used interchangeably, although preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual core countries of traditional East Asia.[4]
^Sinitic refers to Sinophones or Chinese-speaking ethnic groups. It is derived from the Greco-Latin word Sīnai ('the Chinese'), probably from Arabic Ṣīn ('China'), from the Chinese dynastic name
Qín. (
OED)
References
^"Introducing East Asian Peoples"(PDF). International Mission Board. September 10, 2016.
Archived(PDF) from the original on May 13, 2018. Retrieved June 11, 2018.; Minahan, James B. (2014). Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. xx.
ISBN978-1610690171.; "How Asians view each other". The Economist. September 18, 2015.
Archived from the original on January 19, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2018.; Khoo, Isabelle (May 30, 2017).
"The Difference Between East Asians And South Asians Is Pretty Simple". Huffington Post.
Archived from the original on January 12, 2018. Retrieved January 11, 2018.; Silberman, Neil (1996). The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Volume 1. Oxford University Press (published December 5, 1996). p. 151.
ISBN978-0195076189.; Lim, SK (2011-11-01). Asia Civilizations: Ancient to 1800 AD. ASIAPAC. p. 56.
ISBN978-9812295941.
^Pan and Pfeil (2004), "Problems with Terminology", pp. xvii–xx.
^Prescott, Anne (2015). East Asia in the World: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 6.
ISBN978-0765643223.
^Prescott, Anne (2015). East Asia in the World: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 3.
ISBN978-0765643223.
^Ikeo, Aiko (1996). Economic Development in Twentieth-Century East Asia: The International Context. Routledge. p. 1.
ISBN978-0415149006.
^Yoshimatsu, H. (2014). Comparing Institution-Building in East Asia: Power Politics, Governance, and Critical Junctures. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 1.
ISBN978-1137370549.
^Kim, Mikyoung (2015). Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia. Routledge.
ISBN978-0415835138.
^Hazen, Dan; Spohrer, James H. (2005). Building Area Studies Collections. Otto Harrassowitz (published 2005-12-31). p. 130.
ISBN978-3447055123.
^Vickers, Edward (2010). History Education and National Identity in East Asia. Routledge (published October 21, 2010). p. 125.
ISBN978-0415948081.
^Demel, Walter; Kowner, Rotem (2015). Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage. Brill (published April 23, 2015). p. 255.
ISBN978-9004292925.
^Shimabukuro, Moriyo. (2007). The Accentual History of the Japanese and Ryukyuan Languages: a Reconstruction, p. 1.
^Kim, Chin-Wu (1974). The Making of the Korean Language. Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai'i.
^Miller, David (2007). Modern East Asia: An Introductory History. Routledge (published December 15, 2007). pp. 7–8.
ISBN978-0765618221.
^
abWalker, Hugh Dyson (2012). East Asia: A New History. AuthorHouse. p. 2.
^Hayes, Louis D (2009). Political Systems of East Asia: China, Korea, and Japan. Greenlight. pp. xi.
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^Hazen, Dan; Spohrer, James H. (2005). Building Area Studies Collections. Otto Harrassowitz (published December 31, 2005). p. 1.
ISBN978-3447055123.
^Richter, Frank-Jurgen (2002). Redesigning Asian Business: In the Aftermath of Crisis. Quorum Books. p. 15.
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^Kang, David C. (2012). East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. Columbia University Press. pp. 33–34.
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^
abLewis, Mark Edward (2012). China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. Belknap Press (published April 9, 2012). p. 156.
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^
abEdwin O. Reischauer, "The Sinic World in Perspective," Foreign Affairs 52.2 (January 1974): 341—348.
JSTORArchived 2017-01-15 at the
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^
abcLim, SK (2011-11-01). Asia Civilizations: Ancient to 1800 AD. ASIAPAC. p. 89.
ISBN978-9812295941.
^
abcGoscha, Christopher (2016). The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam: A History. Allen Lane.
ISBN978-1846143106.
^Yang, Melinda A. (2022-01-06).
"A genetic history of migration, diversification, and admixture in Asia". Human Population Genetics and Genomics. 2 (1): 1–32.
doi:10.47248/hpgg2202010001.
ISSN2770-5005. ...In contrast, mainland East and Southeast Asians and other Pacific islanders (e.g., Austronesian speakers) are closely related to each other [9,15,16] and here denoted as belonging to an East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) lineage (Box 2). …the ESEA lineage differentiated into at least three distinct ancestries: Tianyuan ancestry which can be found 40,000-33,000 years ago in northern East Asia, ancestry found today across present-day populations of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Siberia, but whose origins are unknown, and Hòabìnhian ancestry found 8,000-4,000 years ago in Southeast Asia, but whose origins in the Upper Paleolithic are unknown.
^Lee H, Kim SS, You KS, Park W, Yang JH, Kim M, Hayman LL (2014). "Asian flushing: genetic and sociocultural factors of alcoholism among East asians". Gastroenterology Nursing. 37 (5): 327–36.
doi:
10.1097/SGA.0000000000000062.
PMID25271825.
S2CID206059192.