WITH VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS, Asian inhabitants rarely regard themselves as Asians. The perception of Asian wholeness derives from the West's idea of itself, which was constructed largely by saying what others were not. It is connected with dividing the world in Occident (the West or Europe) and Orient (or the rest of the world which in the Middle Ages extended from the eastern Mediterranean to the Pacific).

The main geographic and cultural regions of Asia are North Asia, which comprises underpopulated Asian portions of the contemporary Russian Federation; East Asia: China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), Japan, North and South Korea; Southeast Asia: Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam; South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, ...