<p>First, China’s population is standing at 1.413 billion currently–your stats were probably from the 2005 bidecial census. Second, I will assume that the 300 million Chinese (the number you for some reason discredited) refer to those who don’t know Mandarin but speak their local dialects. But guess what? They might as well be included in the population of Mandarin speakers, because once you are fluent in Mandarin you can easily understand the other dialects (mostly spoken by ethnic Chinese who make up 8% of the population). And if you plan to do business in China, chances are you’re not going to be dealing with the ethnic Chinese who predominantly work in agriculture and ranching, in the much poorer western provinces like Tibet. Third, your stats on 130 million Japanese speakers is just WRONG, and grossly underestimated. My original sum of a total of nearly 2 billion speakers of Mandarin or Japanese is accurate to within a hundred million at most.</p>
<p>About using “Asian” instead of “oriental” as a convention, I’ve never heard of that nuance in its usage (objects? rugs? Likely you’re confusing the word with “ornamental”) Oriental is a convenient label for the triculture in East Asia. You don’t just take your own interpretation of a word and call it convention. “Asian” would include the whole peoples of Asia-- in that case YOU are being insensitive to the non-Orientals in Asia by excluding them from identifying with the continent they live on.</p>