Northeast Asia: Delimitation Preconditions, Composition, Boundaries

The approach to the political-economic delimitation of the geographical space of Russia is considered. It fits into the strategy of the eastward turn of Russia. An important place of Asian Russia in this space is determined. Five possible variants of identification of Siberia’s territory are considered: economic, general geographical, federal, physical-geographical, and hydrographic, with the general geographical variant being preferred. It is suggested that the composition of Northeast Asia should include six countries: the northeastern segments of Russia (Eastern Siberia and the Far East), the northeastern and, partly, eastern and central segments of China as well as Mongolia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea and Japan. The delimitation of the western boundary of the macroregion along the western boundaries of Eastern Siberia and Mongolia, and of the southern boundary along the southern watershed divide of the Huang He River basin is substantiated. The delimitation of geographical space of Northeast Asia is supported by the integrated sea and river basin structure, according to the basin concept of natural resource use. An important stage was the idea of establishing the Scientific Center (Association) for Research in Northeast Asia as suggested by Chinese geographers and the establishment of the Scientific Center for Problems of Transboundary Interactions in North Asia and Northeast Asia in the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in spring 2020. Comprehensive atlas mapping of Northeast Asia by efforts of geographers of all macroregion’s states would be one of the nearest-term objectives of collaborative research.

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