geography-based population category East Asian This category was created to accommodate US, UK and EU use of super-national geographic descriptors in non-genetic contexts, to enable researchers to accurately annotate data, prevent loss of data, and comply with local governmental and funding standards around data collection. Individuals who self-identify or are described by authors as East Asian, without any reference to validated genetic ancestry information. This may include individuals from countries such as China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and special administrative states Hong Kong and Macau.