South & Central Asia

In addition, a new $100 million project seeks to increase the economic empowerment of poor, rural women. Cheaper commodities also assisted these economies with declining inflation, enabling governments to focus on infrastructure development and move ahead with much-needed economic reforms. The region generally has stable governments that have introduced supportive policies to facilitate international investments and helped improve investor sentiment.

Diversity And Sensitivity In The Workplace: Understanding Asian Pacific American Staff

However, a few industries have already been born and are experiencing enormous growth, such as advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles, additive manufacturing/3-D printing, telecommunications and mobile phones, and biotechnology. The United States and Western Europe have made significant progress in all these industries. A brief overview of how these industries are growing in Asia, particularly in China, India, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, will be discussed in the following sections. The British also dominated trade with China through their control of ports in Singapore and Hong Kong. The gross domestic products of India and China declined, while the GDPs of Western Europe and the United States increased . Japan’s Shinkansen train network is one of the world’s fastest high-speed railway lines.

South & Central Asia

The summit saw the establishment of an Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter—comprising 10 highly distinguished and well respected citizens from ASEAN Member Countries—to examine and provide recommendations on the direction of ASEAN and the nature of the Charter. Leaders welcomed the 4th and 5th rounds of the Six-Party Talks held in July and November in Beijing, and called on all concerned parties to exert their utmost effort toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. They strongly condemned terrorism and reiterated the need to intensify their efforts to eliminate the root causes of terrorism at the bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels.

Asia: Resources

Russia is the largest country in Asia, despite the fact that a full 25% of Russia's 17,098,250 square kilometers of territory is located in Europe . China comes in second in Asia, with a total area of approximately 9,600,010 km². Finally, the dividing lines between continents are sometimes ambiguous, especially at sea. The island country of Cyprus, for example, is considered by the United Nations to be part of Asia, but it is also a member of the European Union. Similarly, many islands of Oceania could arguably be considered part of Asia, Australia/Australasia, or even South America. Even land boundaries, such as the dividing line between Europe and Asia, have changed throughout history.

During the past 10 years, Asia has increased its forest cover by 30 million hectares to create forest plantations where trees can be intensively managed for higher-yield production. The timber industry estimates that Asia will produce roughly 45 percent of wood from forest plantations by 2020. These plantations will become increasingly important as natural forest resources continue to be depleted. The southwest zone is a dry, hot region that stretches from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia through Pakistan, Iran, and into the Arabian Peninsula.