Asia

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This article is about the continent. For other uses, see Asia (disambiguation).

Asia

Area 44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi)  (1st)[1]

Population 4,560,667,108 (2018; 1st)[2][3]

Population density 100/km2 (260/sq mi)

GDP (PPP) $65.44 trillion (2019; 1st)[4]

GDP (nominal) $31.58 trillion (2019; 1st)[4]

GDP per capita $7,350 (2019; 5th)[4]

Demonym Asian

Countries 49 UN members,

1 UN observer, 5 other states

Dependencies List[show]
Non-UN states List[show]

Languages List of languages

Time zones UTC+2 to UTC+12

Internet TLD .asia

Metropolitan areas of Asia

Largest cities
List of cities in Asia

Delhi

Tokyo

Jakarta

Baghdad

Chongqing

Mumbai

Seoul

Shanghai

Manila

Karachi

Beijing

Guangzhou

Osaka

Dhaka
Bangkok

Kolkata

Tehran

Istanbul

Jerusalem

Shenzhen

Hong Kong

Singapore

UN M49 code 142  – Asia

001  – World
 Asia (/ˈeɪʒə, ˈeɪʃə/ ( listen)) is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located
primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. It shares the continental landmass
of Eurasia with the continent of Europe and the continental landmass of Afro-
Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square
kilometres (17,212,000 sq mi), about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the
Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of
the human population,[5] was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for
not only its overall large size and population, but also dense and large settlements, as
well as vast barely populated regions. Its 4.5 billion people (as of June 2019) constitute
roughly 60% of the world's population. [6]
In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the
Indian Ocean, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. The border of Asia with Europe is a
historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical
separation between them. It is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first
conception in classical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents
reflects East–West cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences, some of which vary on a
spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The most commonly accepted
boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the
east of the Turkish Straits, the Ural Mountains and Ural River, and to the south of
the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas, separating it from Europe.[7]
China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800
CE. China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east, [8][9][10] and for
many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified
Asia,[11] attracting European commerce, exploration and colonialism. The accidental
discovery of a trans-Atlantic route from Europe to America by Columbus while in search
for a route to India demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main
east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a
major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism (particularly East Asia) as well
as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has
since fallen.[12] Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions
including Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taois
m, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, as well as many other religions.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical
antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical
geography.[citation needed] Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic
groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. It
also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot
desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast
subarctic and polar areas in Siberia.

Contents

 1Definition and boundaries

o 1.1Asia–Africa boundary
 o 1.2Asia–Europe boundary
o 1.3Asia–Oceania boundary
o 1.4Ongoing definition
 2Etymology
o 2.1Bronze Age
o 2.2Classical antiquity
 3History
 4Geography and climate
o 4.1Main regions
o 4.2Climate change
 5Economy
 6Tourism
 7Demographics
o 7.1Languages
o 7.2Religions
 7.2.1Abrahamic
 7.2.2Indian and East Asian religions
 8Modern conflicts
 9Culture
o 9.1Nobel prizes
 10Political geography
 11See also
 12References
 13Bibliography
 14Further reading
 15External links

Definition and boundaries

Further information on Asian borders: Geography of Asia §  Boundary, Boundaries
between continents, List of transcontinental countries §  Asia and Europe,
and Copenhagen criteria
Asia–Africa boundary
The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez
Canal.[citation needed] This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in
Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa.
Asia–Europe boundary
Definitions used for the boundary between Europe and Asia in different period of History. The commonly
accepted modern definition mostly fits with the lines "B" and "F" in this image.

The threefold division of the Old World into Europe, Asia and Africa has been in use
since the 6th century BC, due to Greek geographers such
as Anaximander and Hecataeus.[13] Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and
Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgia of Caucasus (from its
mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through the Surami Pass and along the Kura
River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century
BC.[14] During the Hellenistic period,[15] this convention was revised, and the boundary
between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don
River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius,
[16]
 Strabo[17] and Ptolemy.[18] The border between Asia and Europe was historically defined
by European academics.[19] The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans
when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims
of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, and armed resistance by the
tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural
Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721. The major geographical theorist of the empire
was a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and
assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily
Tatishchev, and was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological
studies in preparation for a future book. [citation needed]
In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von
Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia.
Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter
had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various
proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border
had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural
River projects.[20] The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed
along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further
north.[19]
Asia–Oceania boundary
The border between Asia and the region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in
the Malay Archipelago. The Maluku Islands in Indonesia are often considered to lie on
the border of southeast Asia, with New Guinea, to the east of the islands, being wholly
part of Oceania. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century,
have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief
factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the
location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there (not all European).
Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries
was thus a gradual process."[21]
Ongoing definition

Afro-Eurasia shown in green

Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning

with the Ancient Greeks, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept
causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not exactly correspond to
the cultural borders of its various types of constituents. [22]
From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent
system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical
separation between them.[23] For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of
European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and
culturally merely "the western excrescence of the continent of Asia". [24]
Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with
Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make
up a single continuous landmass—Afro-Eurasia (except for the Suez Canal)—and share
a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and the better part of Asia sit atop
the Eurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the
easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range) on the North American Plate.
Etymology

Ptolemy's Asia

The idea of a place called "Asia" was originally a concept of Greek civilization,[25] though
this might not correspond to the entire continent currently known by that name. The
English word comes from Latin literature, where it has the same form, "Asia". Whether
"Asia" in other languages comes from Latin of the Roman Empire is much less certain,
and the ultimate source of the Latin word is uncertain, though several theories have
been published. One of the first classical writers to use Asia as a name of the whole
continent was Pliny.[26] This metonymical change in meaning is common and can be
observed in some other geographical names, such as Scandinavia (from Scania).
Bronze Age
Before Greek poetry, the Aegean Sea area was in a Greek Dark Age, at the beginning
of which syllabic writing was lost and alphabetic writing had not begun. Prior to then in
the Bronze Age the records of the Assyrian Empire, the Hittite Empire and the
various Mycenaean states of Greece mention a region undoubtedly Asia, certainly in
Anatolia, including if not identical to Lydia. These records are administrative and do not
include poetry.
The Mycenaean states were destroyed about 1200 BCE by unknown agents although
one school of thought assigns the Dorian invasion to this time. The burning of the
palaces baked clay diurnal administrative records written in a Greek syllabic script
called Linear B, deciphered by a number of interested parties, most notably by a young
World War II cryptographer, Michael Ventris, subsequently assisted by the
scholar, John Chadwick. A major cache discovered by Carl Blegen at the site of
ancient Pylos included hundreds of male and female names formed by different
methods.
Some of these are of women held in servitude (as study of the society implied by the
content reveals). They were used in trades, such as cloth-making, and usually came
with children. The epithet lawiaiai, "captives", associated with some of them identifies
their origin. Some are ethnic names. One in particular, aswiai, identifies "women of
Asia".[27] Perhaps they were captured in Asia, but some others, Milatiai, appear to have
been of Miletus, a Greek colony, which would not have been raided for slaves by
Greeks. Chadwick suggests that the names record the locations where these foreign
women were purchased.[28] The name is also in the singular, Aswia, which refers both to
the name of a country and to a female of it. There is a masculine form, aswios. This
Aswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa,
centered on Lydia, or "Roman Asia". This name, Assuwa, has been suggested as the
origin for the name of the continent "Asia".[29] The Assuwa league was a confederation of
states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE.
Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word (w)aṣû(m),
which means 'to go outside' or 'to ascend', referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise
in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician word asa meaning
east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for Europe, as being from
Akkadian erēbu(m) 'to enter' or 'set' (of the sun).
T.R. Reid supports this alternative etymology, noting that the ancient Greek name must
have derived from asu, meaning 'east' in Assyrian (ereb for Europe meaning 'west').
[25]
 The ideas of Occidental (form Latin Occidens 'setting') and Oriental (from
Latin Oriens for 'rising') are also European invention, synonymous
with Western and Eastern.[25] Reid further emphasizes that it explains the Western point
of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost
as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern
civilizations on the Eurasian continent.[25] Kazuo Ogura and Tenshin Okakura are two
outspoken Japanese figures on the subject.[25]
Classical antiquity

The province of Asia highlighted (in red) within the Roman Empire.

Latin Asia and Greek Ἀσία appear to be the same word. Roman authors translated Ἀσία
as Asia. The Romans named a province Asia, located in western Anatolia (in modern-
day Turkey). There was an Asia Minor and an Asia Major located in modern-day Iraq.
As the earliest evidence of the name is Greek, it is likely circumstantially that Asia came
from Ἀσία, but ancient transitions, due to the lack of literary contexts, are difficult to
catch in the act. The most likely vehicles were the ancient geographers and historians,
such as Herodotus, who were all Greek. Ancient Greek certainly evidences early and
rich uses of the name.[30]
The first continental use of Asia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE), not
because he innovated it, but because his Histories are the earliest surviving prose to
describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully,[31] mentioning the previous geographers
whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By it he means Anatolia and
the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt.
Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names were "given to
a tract which is in reality one" (Europa, Asia, and Libya, referring to Africa), stating that
most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus (i.e. Hesione),
but that the Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name
on to a tribe at Sardis.[32] In Greek mythology, "Asia" (Ἀσία) or "Asie" (Ἀσίη) was the
name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia".[33]
In ancient Greek religion, places were under the care of female divinities, parallel to
guardian angels. The poets detailed their doings and generations in allegoric language
salted with entertaining stories, which subsequently playwrights transformed into
classical Greek drama and became "Greek mythology". For example, Hesiod mentions
the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, among whom are a "holy company", "who with the
Lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping".[34] Many of these are
geographic: Doris, Rhodea, Europa, Asia. Hesiod explains: [35]
For there are three-thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far
and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters.
The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians (the tribe
that replaced the Luvians in Lydia) in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective
meaning "Asian");[36] and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.
[37]
 According to many Muslims, the term came from Ancient Egypt's Queen Asiya, the
adoptive mother of Moses.[38]

History
Main article: History of Asia

The Silk Road connected civilizations across Asia[39]

The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent. The gray area is the later Timurid Empire.

The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal
regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the
interior mass of the Central Asian steppes.
The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations,
each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia,
the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may
well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel.
Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each
area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands.
The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who
could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of
the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle
East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The
northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the
steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained
very sparsely populated.
The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts.
The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed
barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city
dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do
little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However,
the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force;
for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the
Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.
The Islamic Caliphate's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia
and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control
during its conquests of the 7th century. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of
Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol
invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300
census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people. [40]
The Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to
have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk
Road.[41]
The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century, and would
eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th
century. The Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa
and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onwards. In the 17th century,
the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty. The Islamic Mughal
Empire and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th
centuries respectively.[42] The Empire of Japan controlled most of East Asia and much of
Southeast Asia, New Guinea and the Pacific islands until the end of World War II.

The threefold division of the Old World into Europe, Asia and Africa has been in use since the 6th
century BC, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus.
 
 Map of western, southern, and central Asia in 1885 [43]

The map of Asia in 1796, which also included the continent of Australia (then known as New
Holland).
 

1890 map of Asia

Geography and climate
Main articles: Geography of Asia and Climate of Asia
See also: Category:Biota of Asia

The Himalayan range is home to some of the planet's highest peaks.

Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or
30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi).
Asia is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to
the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus
Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas.[7][44] It is
bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the
north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries, Five of them
(Georgia ,Azerbaijan ,Russia , Kazakhstan and Turkey) are transcontinental
countries and having part of their land in Europe.
Asia has extremely diverse climates and geographic features. Climates range from
arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It is
moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the
largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The
monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the
presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in
moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia is
one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere, and can act as a source of arctic
air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone
activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan. The Gobi Desert is
in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East.
The Yangtze River in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between
Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch
across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north.

Kerala backwaters
 
 

Mongolian steppe
 

South China Karst

 

Altai Mountains
 

Hunza Valley
 

Atolls of the Maldives

Division of Asia into regions by the UNSD
  North Asia
  Central Asia
  Western Asia (Near East)
  South Asia
  East Asia (Far East)
  Southeast Asia

Main regions
There are various approaches to the regional division of Asia. The following subdivision
into regions is used, among others, by the UN statistics agency UNSD. This division of
Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does
not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and
territories. [45]

 North Asia (Siberia)
 Central Asia (The 'stans)
 Western Asia (The Middle East or Near East)
 South Asia (Indian subcontinent)
 East Asia (Far East)
 Southeast Asia (East Indies and Indochina)
Climate change
A survey carried out in 2010 by global risk analysis farm Maplecroft identified 16
countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Each nation's vulnerability
was calculated using 42 socio, economic and environmental indicators, which identified
the likely climate change impacts during the next 30 years. The Asian countries
of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were among the 16
countries facing extreme risk from climate change. Some shifts are already occurring.
For example, in tropical parts of India with a semi-arid climate, the temperature
increased by 0.4 °C between 1901 and 2003. A 2013 study by the International Crops
Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) aimed to find science-based,
pro-poor approaches and techniques that would enable Asia's agricultural systems to
cope with climate change, while benefitting poor and vulnerable farmers. The study's
recommendations ranged from improving the use of climate information in local
planning and strengthening weather-based agro-advisory services, to stimulating
diversification of rural household incomes and providing incentives to farmers to adopt
natural resource conservation measures to enhance forest cover, replenish
groundwater and use renewable energy.[46]

Economy
Main articles: Economy of Asia, List of Asian countries by GDP, List of countries in
Asia-Pacific by GDP (nominal), and List of Asian and Pacific countries by GDP (PPP)

Singapore has one of the busiest ports in the world and is the world's fourth largest foreign exchange trading
center.

Asia has the largest continental economy by both GDP Nominal and PPP in the world,

and is the fastest growing economic region. [47] As of 2018, the largest economies in Asia
are China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia and Turkey based on GDP in both
nominal and PPP.[48] Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office
locations with 4 of the top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul.
Around 68 percent of international firms have office in Hong Kong. [49]
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of China [50] and India have been
growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent
very-high-growth nations in Asia
include Israel, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and
the Philippines, and mineral-rich nations such
as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.
According to economic historian Angus Maddison in his book The World Economy: A
Millennial Perspective, India had the world's largest economy during 0 BCE and 1000
BCE.[51][52] China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of
recorded history.[53][54][55] For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the
largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after
surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1986 and Germany in
1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European
Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC). This ended
in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP was almost as large (current exchange
rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined. [56] In 1995, Japan's economy nearly
equaled that of the US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese
currency reached a record high of 79 yen/US$. Economic growth in Asia since World
War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim, known as
the Asian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the
highest GDP per capita in Asia.[57]

Mumbai is one of the most populous cities on the continent. The city is an infrastructure and tourism hub, and
plays a crucial role in the Economy of India.

It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2025. [58] By
2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world.
Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations.
Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in
natural resources, such as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver.
Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia,
particularly in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and
Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational
corporations, but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many
companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in
Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour
and relatively developed infrastructure.
According to Citigroup 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia
driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India,
Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.[59] Asia has three main
financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Call centers and business process
outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to
the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased
use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due
to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has
become a major hub for outsourcing.
In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$1 million
excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. Last
year Asia had toppled Europe.[60] Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian
centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's
"economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At the end of 2011, there were
18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least
$100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western
Europe with 14,000 people.[61]