Mapping Specialists/Jim McMahon

2022 Facts & Figures: ASIA & OCEANIA

November 1, 2021

TOTAL COUNTRIES: 48

TOTAL POPULATION: 4.4 billion

3

Oscar Wong/Getty Images

NUMBER OF CHILDREN China will now permit couples to have. The country, which has the world’s largest population, is ending its decades-old policy limiting families to one child each and trying to encourage larger families to offset a massive population decline that’s expected in the coming decades.

^{Source: The New York Times}

World’s Largest Democracy

India, with a population of 1.4 billion people, has about 900 million eligible voters. National elections take place over the course of more than five weeks as poll workers make their way to the country’s remotest regions.

^{Source: NPR}

45 million+

NUMBER OF PEOPLE in Vietnam who’ve been lifted out of poverty in the past three decades. Since the country launched economic reforms in 1986, Vietnam has been transformed from one of the world’s poorest countries to one of its fastest growing. Poverty rates have declined from more than 70 percent to less than 6 percent.

^{Source: World Bank}

17,508

NUMBER OF ISLANDS that make up the archipelago nation of Indonesia. About 6,000 of the islands are inhabited, and they stretch across both sides of the equator.

^{Source: Embassy of Indonesia}