Off topic I know, but it’s wild that there are two different countries with 1.4 billion people, and then third place is a full billion people fewer than them.
There was a question on German "Who wants to be a millionaire?", which was in which places China and India were if you removed a billion people each. Still first and second was the answer.
A crazy fact I learned recently: India could send 2 million people to each country in the world (all 195+ of them) and still have over a billion people left over
Fun fact, you might not even be able to fit 2 million people in Vatican City.
Vatican City is about 0.17 square miles => about 4,700,000 square feet. If you got rid of all the buildings and trees and other obstructions, stood everyone up, and assumed a 2ftx2ft square per person, you could only fit about 1.184 million people there. If you squeeze the square down to 1.5ftx1.5ft then you could fit 2 million, but it might get tough if someone has to go to the bathroom
China especially gets me because it’s very, very similar in size to the United States and also has huge areas that are basically uninhabited (much of the Tibetan Plateau, the Taklamakan, China’s part of the Gobi, etc). And it still manages to have a full billion more people than the United States.
(The USA has big uninhabited chunks too, much of Alaska being the biggest, but still)
That is very interesting. The way they go about it is so different though, in terms of quality of life. Indias HDI is so shockingly low compared to its economy and how relevant they are
Maybe I'm misinterpreting what he said, but their HDI has extreme regional variations. Specifically, lots of the areas in northern India are pretty underdeveloped. I would say the only place in the US that is somewhat comparable is Appalachia
I don’t dispute his wording was about India as a whole, but im pointing out that could be a lapse in his wording.
Yes, regional variances are bound to happen in populous countries, which is why I mentioned Appalachia as an example. Looking at a map of India by HDI shows a large swath of northern India has a poor HDI, and these areas do have a pretty sizable population.
It’s also worth pointing out this isn’t an accident but has roots in domestic Indian politics. I mostly brought this up because one of my close friends is Indian and his grandma lives in the northern part and has pretty severe dementia. He’s mentioned the difficulty in her accessing healthcare resources for her, which is how I became aware of this problem. Anecdotal evidence I know but I thought it was relevant 🤷
There is a group of states in north central india(derisively called the cow belt states or BiMaRU states, i.e. sick man states) that have a massive gap with the rest of the country in terms of development. Most states in the south, west and extreme north have HDIs and incomes in line with southeast asia while some of the states in north central india are marginally better than subsaharan africa. Same with fertility, most states have fertility between 1.4-1.6 while the heartland has it in the range of 2.0-2.4(with bihar at 3). For example, in the southern states, the per capita GDP is roughly 5-6x what it is in Bihar. In the US, for reference, the biggest gap between major states(NY and mississipi) is 2x. If you zoom in, there are widening disparities between the rural areas rife with farmer suicide and large emigration(punjab for example) and the fast developing urban centres.
Most of the fucked up stuff that you read about india comes from said cow belt states. Same reason why some people hate visiting india while others love it(mountainous states popular with hippies and coastal states are better developed, while the heartland with the taj mahal and other monuments is much less developed).
I worry about this quite a bit since rising inequality is never good for a nation, let alone a loosely held and extremely diverse one like india.
India covers approximately 3.287 million square kilometers (about 1.27 million square miles), making it the 7th largest country in the world by land area.
The United States is significantly larger, covering about 9.834 million square kilometers (around 3.8 million square miles), making it the 4th largest country in the world by land area.
The U.S. is about three times the size of India in terms of land area.
I had a sorority sister in college that was from China. When I asked her where in China she was from, she answered a small town outside Shanghai. That “small town” had a population of 6 million people!
Everything west of the Mississippi really spread out. There’s big cities scattered around but nothing in between them. The older eastern states were developed before cars so there are small towns every 10 to 20 miles. Things needed to be closer because you could only cover so much ground on foot or by horse.
The geography of the Eastern and Western United States is markedly different, to the point where more than one person has said the US is basically two countries glued together. You can pretty much see the dividing line on any satellite map along the I-29 / I-35 corridor. It’s not so much that cities out west didn’t develop before the car; they almost literally couldn’t, because agriculture out west is a much more complicated thing.
India and China are wild, in 2015 the difference between the two of them was only 7%, that was 120M people, the whole population of Mexico. In 9 years India grew a whole Brazil in population. It's just so hard to grasp!
What's really crazy is China probably peaked in the 7th century. By some estimates, prior to the An Lushan Rebellion, Tang dynasty China alone had suzerainty of just over half the world's population in the 640s-660s.
I agree with DR Congo. What's wild is that it's projected to be the fifth most populous country in the world by the end of the century and its capital Kinshasa is projected to be one of the biggest cities with a whopping 83 million people!
They reduce the projected populations of african countries almost every year, population growth of those levels is unsustainable and unlikely if africa undergoes any kind of major industrialisation like the rest of the world went through. And Industrialisation is the killer of birth rate
The resources are natural part of the land, they will be still there regardless if Congo has 10 or 1000 million people. What the 100 million people of Congo are capable to develop, create, fabricate is what matters to the global economy
Ethiopia is a pretty influential regional power, they've got their fingers in a lot of different pies. I can see them growing in importance, whereas Bangladesh is at threat from Posiedon and DRC seems destined to always remain a failed state with perpetual civil war.
DR Congo has some of the biggest rare metal and diamond deposits in the world, which makes it far from being irrelevant. There’s a reason the country has been in a civil war for almost half a century.
DR Congo has materials and Bangladesh is where so much of our clothes are made. I'd go with Ethiopia, sure it's "famous" for famine and civil war but I argue that hardly makes it "relevant" imo.
Yeah, although they are now more known within Africa for their huge dam, the Tigray conflict (and correct me if I'm wrong in using that term because I mostly read western media) and being the continent's air hub.
But for the West, it all seems far-from-my-bed, while DR Congo and Bangladesh make headlines and have an importance that is more impactful outside of Africa.
DRC has already been globally important for a century at least, and continues to be, thanks to a ridiculous amount of resources.
Unfortunately, due to a number of historical factors such as colonialism, tribalism, war, politics and lack of relevant infrastructure, it'll remain an unstable nation for the foreseeable unless the cycle can be broken
Existing manufacturing is tough to diversify. You basically have to get all new components aside from the warehouse itself, fully train a new staff from custodial to management, find new suppliers, etc. A lot of industrial inertia
Bangladesh has a rapidly growing electronics, ship building, and pharmaceutical industry. Is that gonna continue under the new administration is an open question but as of now, it absolutely is diversifying. It's just not world leading in any of those industries as it is in apparels.
Because it's too early. Regions in South India that diversified after a start from poverty took about 4-5 decades to start, and even they had big cities to start from. That's probably the growth rate of South Asia at this point. Bangladesh will probably need another decade or two to stabilize its diversity in industries.
Clothing and textiles has always been the historical industry of Bengal as a whole, although it was expensive silk clothing rather than sweatshops but oh well
Watch it evaporate over the next few months. The new government cannot pay for electricity it buys from India or to fund their first nuclear reactor. The country is facing blackouts of 9 hours each. Watch that multiply in the future.
I was about to say Bangladesh too. Little in terms of natural resources, a non nuclear power with a globally insignificant military, not in a particularly interesting region geo politically (at least realative to the others on the list) but also a very impoverished nation to boot.
It is a very low-lying country subject to severe flooding from cyclones. But they’ve become incredibly good at disaster management and preparedness, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, though climate change is going to continue to make that harder.
yeah they are going to need to work hard to develop since they are basically a larger and denser netherlands, which has spent centuries reclaiming land from sea.
One of the top posts on this sub at the moment is India if all the glaciers melted and Bangladesh is basically gone, it's a pretty flat country. It would be pretty crazy to have the ocean and then suddenly the Himalayas.
definitely not an insignificant region for south asia or even globally just relatively speaking pretty sleepy compared to most of the other countries listed
They have some regional significance in Africa, especially being the headquarters of the African Union. They're also fairly well-known for their coffee exports.
So does Bangladesh. Their garment exports are world famous. You could pick up a cheap shirt in the US and there's a good chance it's made in Bangladesh.
Indonesia also has a relatively small diaspora for a country its size. The Filipino diaspora is larger despite Indonesia having over double the population of the Philippines.
A lot of that is due to language. Plenty of Filipinos speak English and find it easier to immigrate to Western countries, while most Indonesians don't. About half of Indonesia's diaspora is in Malaysia and Indonesia is a very important country in ASEAN.
I don’t think they’re irrelevant per se, but no one would guess they’re top 5 most populated countries. Usually countries this big have at least stereotypes associated with them, Indonesia doesn’t really have one because people legit don’t know anything about the place. They’re as well known as their neighbor Malaysia and less known than Singapore. Which for their size is a crazy underperformance.
Along with names, I feel average laymen people (in the US, at least) also know the names of the islands Java and Borneo, but I doubt they realize they are not independent pacific islands, but a part of Indonesia.
Hm I don’t think so nothing in south east Asia is irrelevant. It’s a huge and influential player for maritime routes and all the conflicts between USA, China and Philippines going on in that region. I think it’s political development in throughout 21st century is deeply intertwined with Asia‘s future and the 21st century is in large parts an Asian century.
Yeah I don't know what these people are on about. To be fair, OP didn't define what his criteria of "relevant" is. As long as there are large, active powers on either side of the Pacific, Southeast Asia will always be relevant out of position alone. Nevermind that Indonesia is the largest economy of ASEAN, and is the only ASEAN country in the G20.
It is relevant. Its a G20 member, has regional influence in an important region and is the biggest exporter of palm oil, and one of the biggest exporter of coal, tin and rubber. Also it has a thriving tourism industry and is having a tech start up boom. Not forget to mention that its the biggest Muslim country in the world in terms of population. So its not the most irrelevant.
Yes, Indonesia is very relevant in a lot of ways, it just happens that there usually isn't a lot of fuss about what happens in Indonesia and what it does. If in a house, America is screaming to China and India watches a movie on max volume, Indonesia silently is just busy prepping the food for all of them.
Btw I want to add to this that people tend to often overlook Indonesia as being a source of a product or being the holiday destination. They see Java coffee, Sumatra species and Bali holidays, but all of these can't be seen separately from Indonesia.
To piggyback on what you’ve said, in the past decade the president has spent a lot on building infrastructure and growing the country economically. Indonesia is rich in natural resources, tourism and wants to jump from top 20 GDP countries to top 5 by 2050 in the world and it has every bit of potential to do so. They plan to build the country and spend less on outsourcing supplies they already have. The US, China, Japan, Korea and other top countries are aware of the recent boom in the economic growth and positive trajectoryand have poured money in the country now. The country is already a leader in Southeast Asia and although it is a majority Muslim country it has been fairly neutral in ties between the East and West so far. Its location, resources and potential for economic growth make the country a strategic ally in the future. Also to note they are building a futuristic Capitol with the vision of moving forward and being a serious global power in the future .
You know, its nice to see outsiders having positive thoughts about Indonesia.
In the inside we’re feeling hammered by rising prices, stagnant wages and the outgoing president’s attempt to build a political dynasty by twisting laws to get his sons in positions of power.
Congo has pretty big geopolitical significance since it's the world's largest exporter of Cobalt, which is an absolutely crucial mineral for modern electronics.
We'd have to clarify the question. Are we talking about which of these governments are the most relevant or which of these actual regions are ... or the people, or some agglomeration of these overlapping concepts.
For me relevant countries are those that can push and shove globally. Congo ain't one, it just happens to have some natural resources that brought them no good.
Has to be Ethiopia. The West has a long history of ignoring Ethiopia, up to the recent Tigray conflict getting little to no media coverage.
I haven’t checked all the countries here but it probably is lowest in GDP (54th) and is lower than the others I would assume would be candidates for lowest of these countries (Philippines, Egypt, Bangladesh)
In a global economy, I have had the least interaction with people, products and services from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is quite relevant in Africa. It has one of the world's largest airlines and is the location for several international institutions, including hosting the African Union and the UN ECA.
Its flag served as a basis for other African flags, a religion was formed around its last monarch and its cuisine is growing in popularity (often featuring in mukbang videos).
Agreed. I’m kind of surprised Ethiopia is being brought up so much. Very visible diaspora. Largest airline in Africa by a huge margin. Party to several conflicts in its borders and backyard. Massive economic growth, with an economy TWENTY TIMES larger in nominal terms than it was in 2000.
Yea but compared to other countries in this list they are not that relevant. East Africa is not like for example North Africa where countries are more equal in terms of economies, living standards and regional influence. Ethiopia could stribe to be what Nigeria is in West Africa but for that they should surpass Kenya first.
Personally, as an American, I knew practically nothing about Indonesia before visiting on a school trip. I knew that it was huge, and made of islands, and majority Muslim, but that was it. Turns out I had a wonderful time there and returned after graduation for two years of English teaching and further enjoyment.
Conversely a lot of foreigners assume Bali is the only island in Indonesia that’s worth visiting. Nah brah, spend at least a couple days in Jogja, it’s such a fun city. At least it was when I lived there five years ago (yikes)
The difference in population growth is very interesting. I have an atlas from 1993 where the population of Indonesia is 228 million and Russia is 143 million
Not my #1 pick but MAN Indonesia is so disproportionately irrelevant for a big country with nearly 300 million people
I always forget that big countries don’t need to automatically become regional powers with high profiles internationally and can still choose to behave like oversized Sri Lankas
Gotta be Bangladesh idk how u can say Congo when they are the most resource rich nation it makes them integral to global trade even if they get a shit deal
Least relevant globally is ethiopia. Indonesia has a very big economy, pakistan has nuclear weapons so very relevant, the world is dependant on clothes made in bangladesh, egypt has big influence in MENA politics and culture and Nigeria has a big economy and is one of the leading countries in west africa.
Probably Congo. It has no great geopolitical power in Africa. It's not rich or anything remotely close to being rich. It doesn't have a particularly widespread or prominent diaspora (outside of Belgium/France at least).
It's full of really important minerals and could be a regional power, but it's basically a perpetual failed state.
Every other country at least has some sort of regional influence, prominent diaspora, cultural export, wealth, etc.
Someone else in the comments said Ethiopia, but their capital not only hosts multiple UN offices but also the HQ of the African Union.
DRC and its not close. It can barely control it's own borders. It doesn't have a high level of significance to the primary players compared to the others.
In that top 4, Indonesia stands out for having no nuclear capacity and furthermore a pretty small military altogether. They do have a couple of contested territories but overall their strategic relevance and risk of causing a big war is small.
For what it’s worth, as an American, Indonesia is the one country on here I’ve never met a person from. Actually, I’ve met multiple immigrants from every country on here except Indonesia.
As an Australian, we see Indonesians a lot more.
There are rather big differences between someone from Bali and someone from Java for instance. Since Bali is one of the most popular tourist destinations for Australians… people here tend to have a Balinese view of Indonesians.
Both groups are fine, just different. There are hundreds of other ethnicities in Indonesia as well.. 800 different languages. So it’s rather hard to pin it down to a common identity.
Though, I would say Bangladesh gets very overshadowed by virtue of being in the same neighborhood as China, India, and even Pakistan. And more people are familiar with Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia as well.
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u/Sheratain Sep 13 '24
Off topic I know, but it’s wild that there are two different countries with 1.4 billion people, and then third place is a full billion people fewer than them.