Asia: position, resources, population and economic groups

Asia is very rich in minerals: a large share of the world’s oil and gas lies around the Persian Gulf, the Caspian region, the Turan Plain and South-East Asian shelves; coal in China, India, Indonesia and Kazakhstan; iron, manganese and chromium in China, India and Kazakhstan; South-East Asia has the world’s biggest tin deposits (the “tin belt”). Water and climate resources are uneven: South-East Asia is wet, while the deserts of Arabia and Central Asia are dry, so Asia is the cradle of irrigated farming; about 70 % of the world’s irrigated land is on this continent, with India and China in front. Cropland is limited by mountains, deserts and dense population. Asia has about 4.8 billion people; China and India have about 1.4 billion each, more than a third of humanity. Next come Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iran and Türkiye. Natural increase is low in Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Thailand and high in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Yemen. The continent’s urbanisation level is a little above 50 %: very high in Singapore, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Israel and the Gulf states, low in Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia and Tajikistan. Density is highest on the North China Plain, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Java and Japan; lowest in the Arabian deserts, the Gobi, Tibet and Siberia. Asia is the birthplace of all major religions – Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism – as well as Confucianism and Shinto.