1y ago

TIL Taiwan and Australia have the same population, about 23.6 million

Australia is about 200 times bigger, by landmass, 7.7 million to Taiwan's 36,000 square km

18 comments

Ok, now compare the populations of both places for the category of 'mammals with chlamydia.'
- Chlamydia affects less than one percent of people in Taiwan, 3.7 percent of people in Australia(according to the statistics), so Australia was way ahead even without a 100% chlamydial jump bear supplement.
  
  I blame sexy koalas!

Taiwan is my favorite country
- It's pretty great. Maybe not my favorite, but it's floating around the top of my list for sure.

If you look at habitable zones, most of Australias cities are around the coast. The center supports very little due to the arid climate.
- Australia is so ridiculously huge that even the relatively tiny fraction that's amenable to crops is still one of the world's biggest. Only 4% of its land is arable and that still means it has the 10th largest arable area of any country (ten times more arable land than Taiwan has any kind of land)
  
  And they are going through a water crisis made exponentially worse by privatizing the water rights to their rivers.
- The center of Taiwan is very mountainous so most of the population of Taiwan is around the coast as well.

I think your data may be old? Current estimates have Taiwan's population at 23.4m and 27m for Australia's. The disparity in density still stands though!
- Thank you!
  Heard it on a podcast by the economist from 2023, first search results showed Australia 23.6, Taiwan 23.4-7, and I TILed.
  Maybe the host was being loose with his numbers and my search results were coincidental.
  The similarity in population is still shocking to me