The biggest countries in Asia

Which are the biggest countries in Asia by area?

China is the biggest country in Asia by area, with 9,596,961 km². That is 30.0% of the land of all 48 countries in Asia.

China takes 30 percent of Asia's land and is nearly three times the size of India. Kazakhstan, third, is the largest landlocked country in the world. Saudi Arabia is fourth, and the whole of the Arabian peninsula is desert, so it has fewer people than Pakistan's Punjab province (about 128 million). Indonesia, fifth, is spread over about 17,000 islands.

Japan, which has the second biggest economy on the continent, is only 17th by area. Bangladesh, with 176 million people, is 26th. Russia is not on this list because we count it as European, though its Asian part alone, about 13 million km², would be first.

Which are the biggest countries in Asia by population?

India has the most people in Asia: 1.46 billion in the UN's 2025 estimate, or 30.4% of the 4.82 billion people who live in these 48 countries.

India and China are the only two countries in the world with more than a billion people, and Asia has 59 percent of the world's population. Indonesia is a distant third at 285.7 million, then Pakistan and Bangladesh. Those five countries together have 3.59 billion people, more than every country outside Asia combined.

Japan is sixth and shrinking: its population peaked at 128 million in 2008. Vietnam passed 100 million in 2023; the Philippines did so about a decade earlier. Saudi Arabia, fourth by area, is 18th by population, and Kazakhstan and Mongolia, third and seventh by area, are 25th and 41st.

Which are the biggest countries in Asia by GDP?

China has the biggest economy in Asia. The IMF projects its GDP at $20.85 trillion for 2026, which is 46.9% of the total for Asia.

China's economy is 47 percent of Asia's total and 4.8 times Japan's. Japan and India are second and third and close to each other. South Korea is fourth with a population of 51.7 million, smaller than Myanmar's, and Turkey fifth.

Singapore is the surprise in the top ten. It is a city of 734 km² with a bigger economy than Thailand, which has 11 times as many people. Taiwan and Israel are eighth and ninth. Pakistan, fourth by population, is 17th by GDP, and Bangladesh, fifth by population, is 16th.

How does the ranking change with the measure?

The top five under each measure, side by side:

China is first, second and first. India is second, first and third. Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, third and fourth by area, drop to 25th and 18th by population. Japan goes the other way, 17th by area, second by GDP. Eight countries, three ranks each:

How do we count?

We use the UN's regional grouping. Asia here runs from Turkey and the Arabian peninsula in the west to Japan and Indonesia in the east, and includes the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan and its neighbours). Russia counts as European, Cyprus as European, and Egypt as African, even though the Sinai peninsula is in Asia. That gives 48 countries, including Taiwan and Palestine.

Area is total area including lakes and rivers, from the UN Statistics Division and the CIA World Factbook. Population is the UN World Population Prospects estimate for 2025, taken from the World Bank. GDP is the IMF World Economic Outlook (April 2026) projection for 2026, in current US dollars. We use the same figures on the map, so the boxes there and the tables here agree. More on the data.