Could half the world’s population really fit inside one circle?
The Yuxi Circle: a 4,000 km radius around southern China contains more than 55% of humanity.
Inside the circle
About 4.32 billion people. It reaches across the great population centers of South, East, and Southeast Asia.
Outside the circle
About 3.48 billion people. The rest of humanity—less than 45% in the 2020 dataset—lives beyond the circle.
What’s inside the circle?
Major country populations within its reach
| China | ≈1.42B |
| India | ≈1.40B |
| Indonesia | ≈274M |
| Pakistan | ≈227M |
| Bangladesh | ≈167M |
| Japan | ≈126M |
| Philippines | ≈112M |
| Vietnam | ≈98M |
These are rounded 2020 whole-country populations for context. The 4,000 km boundary cuts through some countries, so these figures are not a subtotal of the 4.32 billion people inside the circle.
And it isn’t all crowded.
The circle also takes in large areas of sea and sparsely populated landscapes including the Tibetan Plateau, the Taklamakan Desert, Mongolia, and parts of southern Siberia. More than half of humanity fits inside despite all that lightly populated space.
Population is far more geographically concentrated than a world map makes it feel.
The circle even includes large low-density areas, which makes the concentration more striking.
What does a world map hide when people are distributed this unevenly?
Source: Alasdair Rae’s Yuxi Circle analysis, using WorldPop 2020 1 km population data. Rae tested more than 1,500 cities; a 4,000 km geodesic circle centered on Yuxi, Yunnan, contained about 4.32 billion people—just over 55% of the 7.8 billion world population in that dataset. Country totals in the dropdown are rounded 2020 population context and are not added to calculate the circle total.