Inner Asia

Map of Inner Asia, showing the extent of the area studied by the Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, located at Indiana University in the United States

Map of Inner Asia, showing the extent of the area studied by the CIAS at the University of Toronto.

Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central, and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of "Central Asia", mostly the historical ones, but certain regions that are often included in Inner Asia, such as Iran, are not a part of Central Asia by any of its definitions. Inner Asia may be regarded as the western and northern "frontier" of China proper and as being bounded by East Asia proper, which consists of China proper, Japan and Korea.^[1]

The extent of Inner Asia has been understood differently in different periods. "Inner Asia" is sometimes contrasted to "China proper", that is, the territories originally unified under the Qin dynasty with majority identifying their ethnicity as Han populations. By the year 1800, Chinese Inner Asia consisted of the Tibetan Plateau, Xinjiang and Mongolian Plateau. They were governed through administrative structures different from those of the older Chinese provinces.^[2] The frontier regions of China proper are also sometimes included as part of Inner Asia.^[3][4]