In 2013, teacher Ken Myers from Texas drew attention to the fact that over half the world’s population live inside a circular region on the world map centered around the South China Sea. This became known as the Valeriepieris circle, after Ken’s Reddit username. His article is here.
In November 2022, I decided to test whether this was still the case, and using September 2022 data from World Population Review, the results are below.
Clearly it is still true!
Total world population: 7,975m at Sep 2022
1,425m China
1,420m India
276m Indonesia
237m Pakistan
171m Bangladesh
125m Japan
116m Phillipines
98m Vietnam
71m Thailand
54m Myanmar
51m S Korea
34m Malaysia
30m Nepal
26m N Korea
23m Taiwan
22m Sri Lanka
17m Cambodia
10m Papua New Guinea
7m Laos
Total of these countries: 4,213m = 53% of the total world population.
India and China account for 36%.
