Asia

M

Environmental Issues

Asian countries share some difficult environmental problems. Among the most significant are land and soil degradation, lessening the land’s capacity to sustain life. Desertification is an extreme example of land degradation. Scientists estimate that 10 percent of all land has been transformed from productive use into desert, and another quarter is at risk. The desert regions of the Middle East have been spreading for hundreds of years. Prehistoric forests in the region were destroyed by human habitation. Overgrazing and destruction of surrounding vegetation have continued the desertification of the region.

Deforestation is another serious problem. Closed-canopy tropical rain forests are distributed from northeast India through Southeast Asia and north as far as southern China. From 1960 to 1990 Asia lost nearly one-third of its tropical forests. Both India and the Philippines have less than one-quarter of their original forest cover.

In recent years the rate of forest loss in places such as Cambodia, Laos, and Indonesia has accelerated. The increasing population of people who practice shifting cultivation—also known as slash-and-burn agriculture—has done some damage, but rapid commercial harvesting of the rain forest is now causing the greatest concern. Despite government measures to ban or reduce logging in areas of Southeast Asia, illegal logging continues throughout the region. In some areas it is often with the support of military or guerrilla forces who use the proceeds to support their activities.

The rapid industrialization of countries in East and Southeast Asia has created serious air pollution. Two of the main pollutants produced by the combustion of fossil fuels, which include petroleum and natural gas, are suspended particulate matter (SPM) and sulfur dioxide. These are harmful to the human respiratory tract and cause illnesses such as bronchitis.

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Cities in China, especially Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, and Xian, have among the highest levels of SPM pollution in the world due to their heavy use of coal for residential and industrial energy. Indian cities, including Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai (formerly Bombay), also have high levels of SPM and sulfur dioxide from fossil fuel use. Tokyo and other Japanese manufacturing centers have a lesser problem with air pollution because government controls are greater.

Some scientists predict global warming will cause the polar ice caps to melt, raising mean sea levels 230 mm (9 in) by 2050 and 00.50 m (20 in) by 2100. Rising sea levels would have catastrophic consequences for coastal Asian countries. The worst hit would be Bangladesh, where more than 110 million people live in the low-lying Ganges Delta. Already vulnerable to cyclones and tidal waves that inundate the region, 13,000 sq km (5,000 sq mi) of Bangladesh’s land area would be lost with a 1 m (3 ft) rise in sea levels. The high population densities of these low-lying areas make resettlement to higher ground impractical.

Environmental consciousness in Asia is growing. Most Asian countries are increasingly implementing more environmental regulations. Economic development, however, remains a greater priority in most developing countries.

III

The People of Asia

The people of Asia are more diverse than those of any other continent. They are highly concentrated in a small proportion of the total area, chiefly in the southeast quarter of Asia. In the northern and interior areas, and in most parts of Southwest Asia, the average population densities are low. However, people in these regions live in concentrated areas on river oases, such as the Toshkent oasis, where the actual densities are very high. In Siberia, settlements are located primarily along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and its branches. In East Asia, Southeast Asia, and most of South Asia, people are crowded onto relatively small lowland areas near rivers, where population densities often exceed 580 persons per sq km (1,500 per sq mi). In China, for example, 90 percent of the population is concentrated in the eastern third of the country. Even in highly industrialized Japan, most of the populace is concentrated in small lowlands where the largest cities are located.

A

Ethnology and Languages

Chinese, a member of the Sino-Tibetan languages family, is the most commonly spoken language in Asia. More than 1 billion residents of China, plus many of the ethnic Chinese who live throughout Asia, speak Mandarin Chinese or one of the Chinese variants.

Linguists consider Japanese, spoken by 125 million people, and Korean, which has 69 million speakers, to be isolated languages. Some linguists, however, believe they may be related to each other or to languages in the Altaic languages family.

Southeast Asia contains no dominant language. Mainlanders speak Thai, Malay, Khmer, Burmese, Lao, and Vietnamese. In the remoter highlands live tribes who speak other languages. The Hmong (Meo) of the highland regions in northern Laos are an example. Most residents of Malaysia and Indonesia speak a form of Malay, known as Bahasa Malaysia in Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia. The majority of Indonesians also speak a local language. Residents of Java, for example, speak Sundanese in the western part of the island and Javanese in the center and east. With total speakers numbering more than 22 million, Malay belongs to the Austronesian languages family.

In South Asia, millions of people in Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmīr, and northern India speak Urdu or Hindi, which are Indo-Aryan languages and part of the Indo-Iranian languages family. In southern India and in northern Sri Lanka, people speak Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Telugu.

In Southwest Asia, languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages family predominate. People throughout this large region speak Arabic, although in Israel, Hebrew is more widely spoken. Most Iranians speak Persian, an Indo-European language.

Speakers of Turkic languages, a division of the Altaic languages family, are numerous in Central Asia and in western China. Russian, a Slavic language, is the principal language of Siberia and many parts of Russian Asia.

European languages made some inroads from the 16th to the early 20th century when colonial powers controlled parts of Asia. At the present time, however, it is mainly people educated in colonial schools prior to independence who speak Dutch in Indonesia or French in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. English is the exception; increasing numbers of people in Asia speak it. English is an official government language in India, as well as the official language of groups such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which unites seven main Southeast Asian countries.

B

Demography

The continent’s total population (2007 estimate) is 4 billion. East Asia contains about 40 percent of Asia’s population, and South and Central Asia together contain another 40 percent. They are followed by Southeast Asia, with 15 percent of the continent’s population, and West Asia, with 5 percent. China and India together contain some 2.3 billion people, or more than one-third of the world’s population. Asia’s overall population density of 130 persons per sq km (337 per sq mi) of land area is the highest of all continents.

The annual rate of population increase for the continent as a whole is 1.1 percent. The highest growth rates—in excess of 2.5 percent per year—are found in Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Laos, and Jordan.

Population growth in South Asia is particularly concerning. Although India’s growth rate declined during the 1990s, its population is still projected to grow to 1.45 billion by the year 2025. Pakistan and Bangladesh are also expected to grow considerably. Even with significant improvements to family planning, the combined population of the three countries is projected to reach the alarming level of 1.80 billion by 2025—nearly one-quarter of the world’s total projected population.

In contrast, a stringent family planning program has reduced China’s growth rate to 0.6 percent. Indonesia, the third largest country in Asia, has reduced its population growth rate to 1.2 percent per year, also through effective family planning. Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan have growth rates well below 2 percent.

Countries that have experienced high growth rates over the last decade have youthful populations. More than 40 percent of the populations of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, and Pakistan are under 16 years of age. The population growth rates will inevitably increase as these children become adults and begin having their own children. On the other hand, less than 25 percent of the populations of Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are under 16. The cost of supporting aging populations is a major concern of both Japan and Singapore.

In most Asian countries the majority of the population live in small rural settlements where they work in agriculture or local services and industries linked to agriculture. More than three—quarters of the people in Nepal, Laos, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are rural dwellers. In Bhutan, more than 90 percent of the population are rural residents.

Urbanization has proceeded rapidly in recent decades. The urban population accounts for a majority in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The Philippines and Malaysia also have relatively large urban populations. In total, Asia accounts for more than half the world’s urban population. That proportion is expected to increase because Asian cities are generally growing at about twice the rate of overall populations.

South and Southeast Asia are dotted with large cities that developed as a result of European economic and political domination. Among these are Mumbai, Kolkata, Colombo, George Town (Penang), Goa, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Jakarta, Karāchi, Kuala Lumpur, Chennai (formerly Madras), Manila, Phnom Penh, Singapore, Surabaya, and Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon). Only Bangkok is not a former colonial center, but it resembles the others in most other respects. Even in China, many of the larger coastal cities were strongly influenced by European presence. In Japan, more than 77 percent of the population is urban. In most other countries the urban population ranges between 20 percent and 40 percent. In Southwest and Central Asia, ancient traditions of city building were reinforced by Islamic culture, giving rise to cities such as Baghdād, Damascus, İstanbul, Jerusalem, and Tehrān (Teheran). Modern urbanization is reflected in cities such as Ankara, Beirut, Tel Aviv-Yafo (Tel Aviv-Jaffa), and Toshkent. But urban populations are a small proportion of the whole in some countries of Southwest and Central Asia. Concerns about the unequal distribution of population have encouraged governments to develop resettlement policies. Indonesia’s transmigration program, which began in the 1960s, has focused on encouraging people to shift from the crowded islands of Java and Bali to more sparsely populated locations in Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and Papua. In the mid-1990s, however, the program was being scaled back due to high costs and the exhaustion of quality land for resettlement. Malaysia has run a generally successful resettlement scheme. In Vietnam, mismanagement and a lack of adequate funding have caused its resettlement plan to be far less successful.

Fears about the emergence of very large cities have prompted governments to try to harness their rates of growth. Attempts to halt migration to large cities have been generally unsuccessful in market economies. Jakarta was proclaimed a “closed city” in the 1970s, but it had little impact on migrants. In the socialist countries of the region, such as China and Vietnam, controls on migration to cities have been more successful. As these countries have shifted to a market economy, however, previous restrictions on population movement have been eroded and cities have become magnets for displaced rural people as in the rest of Asia.

Another strategy has been to divert migrants toward secondary cities and smaller towns. The South Korean government has successfully fostered the growth of industrial cities in the south, such as Gwangju and Daejeon, in order to ease pressure on Seoul. Thailand—concerned by the dominance of Bangkok, where nearly two-thirds of all Thai urban dwellers live—has fostered growth in northern cities such as Chiang Mai. But there has been little impact on Bangkok’s population. Likewise, Manila remains the dominant urban center in the Philippines despite attempts to attract industry and people to alternative locations, such as Cebu.

C

Religion

Islam is the dominant religion in most countries of Southwest Asia and in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Large minorities of Muslims are also found elsewhere in Asia. Non-Muslims in Southwest Asia include Jews in Israel and Christians in Lebanon.

Hinduism is the chief religion of India and on the island of Java in Indonesia. Buddhism, which originated in northeastern India, has only a few adherents there but is now one of the principal religions of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

Buddhism was also strong in North Korea before 1948 and in Mongolia before 1929 when their Communist governments began partially suppressing religion. Although in 1992 Mongolia shifted to a democratic government that allows greater religious freedom, most Mongolians are now either nonreligious or atheists. Confucianism, which is more a social and moral code than a religion, developed in China but has been largely suppressed by the Communist government. Since the beginning of economic reforms in the 1980s, China has had increased contact with outsiders and religious and Confucian practices have also increased. Buddhist practices continued in Vietnam despite government efforts to suppress them during the 1970s and 1980s; most restrictions have since been lifted.

Japan has a native religion called Shinto. Shinto, which has been mixed with many practices of Buddhism, centers on the worship of ancestors and natural spirits. The religion formerly accepted the divinity of the Japanese emperor, but this aspect of Shinto was abandoned after the Japanese defeat in World War II (1939-1945).

Christianity, as represented by the Russian Orthodox Church, was the principal religion of Russia prior to the 1922 founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which dissolved in 1991. For most of its existence, the USSR’s Communist government discouraged religious practices. In 1990, however, the government lifted restrictions on religious worship and the Russian Orthodox Church reemerged as the major Christian denomination.

Roman Catholic missionaries carried Christianity to the Philippines. Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries also converted many people in Korea, Japan, India, and among the hill peoples of Myanmar.

Many groups living in remote areas of the Asian continent, such as the Karen and Shan in Myanmar, practice religions unique to their cultures. These religions can be complex, often involving practices of animism, the belief that every object has a spirit.

Religious conflicts simmer throughout Asia and add to regional insecurity. In the Middle East, peace agreements in the 1990s helped lessen the dispute between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the mid-1990s Afghanistan was enmeshed in a civil war between fundamentalist Muslims backed by Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Arab states, and more moderate Muslims supported by Iran, Russia, India, and Tajikistan. India and Pakistan wrestle over the territory of Jammu and Kashmīr, commonly known as Kashmīr. India claims Kashmīr on historical grounds, whereas Pakistan believes Kashmīr’s Muslim population should be in an Islamic state. In Southeast Asia, the Muslim Moro people of Mindanao Island in the Philippines have long fought with the government, arguing for greater autonomy and closer links with fellow Muslims of Malaysia’s Sabah state. Although the largest rebel group and the government negotiated a peace agreement that created a Muslim autonomous region in 1996, other rebels have continued fighting. Even with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia finds the strongly Islamic residents of Aceh at the northern end of Sumatra a source of political tensions.