Talk:Far East

Talk1
The commenter below fails to note that Asians didn't coin "Western world" and certainly never came up with "Far West." In any case debate is democratic and good and I see nothing wrong with asking questions about the appropriateness or lack thereof of terms; besides, "Far East" hasn't been criticized only by Asians. The commenter's knee-jerk assumption that the article was written by an Asian and his apparent desire to quash debate is the only bitterness I can see.

If the term far east is eurocentric, then the term western world is asian centric. This article is a disgrace to wikipedia, and was written by a very bitter asian individual. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.227.147 (talk) 10:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This article only gives one definition of Far East. The term could also be used as the opposite of Near East which generally refers to the Middle East/ West Asia and parts of Central Asia, North Africa and sometimes Eastern Europe. In such a case the far east would be most of Asia excluding the Middle East, namely North Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This article makes no mention of South Asia at all. Morinae (talk) 09:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Well if you feel liking to improve this article feel free to contribute this article do have serious problems specially with South and Central Asia. — ■ ~∀SÐFﾑｻ~ ■ =]  Babashi? antenna? 05:47, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The terms Near East, Middle East and Far East came about because of their relationship to the Greenwich Meridian i.e., 0-degrees longitude. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 13:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Geographical boundaries
There is a lot of confusion about the boundaries between this article and Middle east, the later one also including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian plateau... Are these regions really usually included in Far east ? It should be at least referenced.... Moroever the little map on the upper right does not include these regions !!! --Flying tiger (talk) 14:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Afghanistan and Pakistan are not part of Middle East they might be culturally Middle East but both of this countries are in the same situation as Northwestern Africa which are culturally Middle East but not geographically. Afghanistan and Pakistan are accurately located in South Asia. — ■ ~∀SÐFﾑｻ~ ■ =]  Babashi? antenna? 05:29, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I will take Northwestern Africa back, Middle East is more related to the Arab World so even Iran is pretty much geographical located in South Asia rather then Middle East. — ■ ~∀SÐFﾑｻ~ ■ =]  Babashi? antenna? 05:43, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think your map's orientagion might be slightly off kilter. You're correct about Pakistan, but Afghanistan and Iran not in any wise south in relation to the Arab countries, and are considerably north of the Arabian Peninsula, which is also called southwest Asia, also unquestioningly included in the middle east.


 * "southwest asia, "south asia" and "southeast Asia" are all separated from one another by bodies of water. The areas to the north of said bodies, which connects the three "south Asias" on land are not usually considered to be south asia themselves..Pakistan may be an exception, since it was historically part of India before British India was partitioned by the British upon their relinquishment of the former colony. Therefore, i think there is a stronger argument for including Pakistan in south Asia on cultural grounds as well as (or rather than) geographical. The only reason to include Pakistan with the middle east is purely based on their religion, which does not seem justified to me -- any more than it would be include Bosnia or Albania, or any of the other various Muslim countries of Europe with the middle east.

Firejuggler86 (talk) 21:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Why is south asia included???
In the article itself the term was used for lands east of british india. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.23.230.219 (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

the image purported a notion of a "Greater Far East" including India and Central Asia which was completely unreferenced either in this article or on the image page. I have replaced the image. WP:CITE isn't optional or "nice to have". --dab (𒁳) 13:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Eurocentricity
I take it we are witnessing a bit of involuntary comedy here, the article text full of PC rambling about how dreadfully "Eurocentric" this term is supposed to be while the infobox gives the term's Chinese, Korean, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese equivalents. Somehow, nobody seems to insist on suggesting that the term "Western world" betrays Sinocentrism. The fact of the matter is that these notions of "east" and "west" are "terra-centric", referring to the Eurasian landmass rather than the Pacific Ocean. This is probably connected with the circumstantial fact that Homo sapiens is a land animal. It discriminates against the Cetaceans of course, who no doubt would refer to the Californian coast as the Far East, and to Nippon as the Far West, so we may need a PC summary acknowledging that. --dab (𒁳) 13:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Ye say well ;). I also think some of this comes from a misunderstandomg of the different uaages of the word "far".

Firejuggler86 (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Well said. It's in relation to the whole of the Eurasian land mass. People are reading things into this that aren't there. The UK doesn't object to being part of Western Europe, even though that could be seen to be an eastern European perspective. Bermicourt (talk) 13:11, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Coa cambodia.jpg
The image File:Coa cambodia.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

The following images also have this problem:


 * File:Coat of arms of Singapore.jpg
 * File:Coat of Arms of the Philippines.png

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --05:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hong Kong official language
Hong Kong's official languages state Chinese and English. It does not specify which Chinese language, and so I think that putting "Cantonese" in brackets is unnecessary and should be removed. Either that, or at least put in the words 'De facto: Cantonese" in there. Check the note on the article of Hong Kong

"The Basic Law of Hong Kong states that the official languages are "Chinese and English". [1] It does not explicitly specify the standard for "Chinese". While Standard Mandarin and Simplified Chinese characters are used as the spoken and written standards in mainland China, Cantonese and Traditional Chinese characters are the long-established de facto standards in Hong Kong. See also: Bilingualism in Hong Kong "

--Platinum inc (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

west of India
The introduction states that Chinese people call anything west of India "taixi" (泰西). I have never heard of this term and I know the "tai" word is Thailand. Does anyone one if "tai" was a name of India? Blueshirts (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

mongolian areas
I like the notion of using sub-state divisions (like provinces) to show the nuances on this map of the Far East. However, if one is going to include every province of Mongolia, you should either: add the Mongolian Republics inside Russia (Tuva and Buryatia) because their culture is very much Mongolian, or not include Outer Mongolia at all. Today, there is no prefecture level of Inner Mongolia that does not possess a Han majority, so it might be suitable to keep Inner Mongolia within the East Asian sphere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.76.151.143 (talk) 04:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

no regional languages for Russia
Russian its the only language which should be staying since for the other countries its the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 343zoz (talk • contribs) 20:11, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Technically we could add the name in the languages of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. - M0rphzone (talk) 07:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Papua-New Guinea
On the included map Papua-New Guinea is not colored as belonging to the Far East. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 20:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I have never heard Papua New Guinea or Timor Leste referred to as the Far East, even though these countries may be part of Southeast Asia. Aren't they more Australasian than Far Eastern? Morinae (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Map description
The map's description says that it is a map of the Far East, "culturally defined." However, there is no common culture of the Far East. The traditional hunting-gathering peoples of Northern Siberia have literally nothing to do with the farmers of New Guinea. East Asia is its own cultural sphere, as are mainland Southeast Asia and the Malay world.

While people who don't know much about the region often group together Southeast Asia and East Asia due to the inhabitants of both regions having relatively similar physical characteristics, Southeast Asia culturally has more in common with India than East Asia.

Furthermore, if you want to go cultural and include Mongolia, then you'd probably also have to include Buryatia, which is traditionally Mongolic in both language and culture. The map isn't that great.

It should be changed to "geographically defined." Arumdaum (talk) 09:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Enriching article with information
New informatiob about total size population economy religion ethnic groups in the region that marked on the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.138.239.137 (talk) 07:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Near East § Italics
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Near East § Italics. – Novem Linguae (talk) 00:04, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Population sorting is wrong
When you try to sort the countries' populations by least to most populous or vice versa, it is inaccurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UsernamesArePublic.Unfortunately. (talk • contribs) 11:10, 29 May 2022 (UTC)