Central Asia

Regional overview

Historically, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asia), Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north.

It is also sometimes referred to as Middle Asia, and, colloquially, "the 'stans" (as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with that suffix) and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.

Various definitions of its exact composition exist, and no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, West Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.

In modern contexts, all definitions of Central Asia consensually include these five republics of the former Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), Turkmenistan), and Uzbekistan, with a total population of 61.5 million as of 2009 - in other words, in total around the size of one of the larger members of the European Union.

Other areas often included are Mongolia, Afghanistan, northern and western Pakistan, northeastern Iran, Kashmir, and sometimes Xinjiang in western China and southern Siberia in Russia.

For VISCED purposes, Central Asia is defined in the stricter sense above purely as the countries of the former Commonwealth of Independent States that are mainly or partially in Asia, as judged by cultural as well as geographic frontiers.

The complete list is:

1. Kazakhstan (pop. 16.0 million)
2. Kyrgyzstan (5.5 million)
3. Tajikistan (7.3 million)
4. Turkmenistan (5.1 million)
5. Uzbekistan (27.6 million).

This corresponds exactly to the definition of the Central Asia subregion in the UN geoscheme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Asia). It is thus a subset of the countries in the wider supraregion of Category:Asian former CIS which includes Transcaucasia also.

References

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> Asia
> VISCED supraregions
> Countries

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