ABSTRACT

Consideration of East Asia’s development problem begins and ends with the question of overpopulation. The region does not have a large part of the world’s land area, but does have a heavy share of its population. Its area (less than 18 million sq. kilometres) is 13 per cent of the world’s land area. But it carried just over 1,000 million people in 1948, or about 45 per cent of the human race; rising to over 1,600 million in 1963, or over 50 per cent of mankind.