Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 16th of December 2018 to The Sounding Line.

It is well known that China is the most populous country on Earth, but it is easy to underestimate just how much more populous China is compared to other countries. The following map, from Visual Capitalist, compares the 1.4 billion people living in the 33 regions of China (22 provinces, four municipalities, five autonomous regions, and two special administrative regions) to the countries whose populations are roughly equivalent.

One in six people alive today live in China. China’s capital, Beijing, is more populous than Norway, Sweden, and Finland combined and the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan,  Anhui, and Xinjiang Uyghur are more populous than Germany, the UK, France, and Australia respectively.

Despite China’s massive population, rising standards of living and decades under its ‘One Child‘ policy have caused its fertility rate to plummet. China’s ‘One Child’ policy and its preference for male heirs has also resulted in roughly 34 million more men than women in China today. The corresponding dearth of new children has made China one of the fastest ageing countries in the world. Accordingly, China’s population is expected to begin to decline in the mid 2020s, at which time India will overtake it as the world’s most populous country.

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