Category: Asia

South, East and Southeast Asia – main areas of the population in Asia
With just under 4.4 billion residents, Asia is home to more people than any other continent. Seven Asian countries – China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Russia, Pakistan and Japan – are among the ten most populous countries in the world, each with well over 100 million residents. There is a particularly strong population concentration in the broad strip that extends from the Indian subcontinent through Southeast Asia, China and Korea to Japan (interrupted only by the high mountain ranges in eastern China). The two most populous countries in the world are located here – the People’s Republic of China with 1.37 billion residents and India with 1.32 billion residents – which together make up around a third of the world’s population.

Settlement centers and unfavorable areas

In a clear contrast to the density belt of South and Southeast Asia, there are regions in which the natural spatial conditions, in particular climatic unfavorable conditions and peripheral location, have prevented dense settlement. In addition to the sparsely populated North Asia, these areas also include the climatically disadvantaged and extremely sparsely populated Central Asia with its steppes, deserts and mountains, in which the soils are too dry or rocky for agricultural use. In these areas there is at most a selective or island settlement, mostly in the vicinity of significant mineral resources, along major transport routes (e.g. Trans-Siberian Railway, Baikal-Amur Mainline), in isolated oases or regionally limited basin landscapes. For more information about the continent of Asia, please check programingplease.com.