The Philippines: a small country?

It's not a small country. In one glance, most think that RP is small, that is because the point of comparison are the big countries of the USA, Russia, Canada, China, and Australia. These countries are indeed the largest countries in the world---in land area. Add to that the archipelagic nature of the country which resembles a skeleton of a dinosaur on a map and you get the image that the Philippines is a mini country. You may want to know this---geographers really classify the Philippines, with its land area of 300,000 km2, as a medium-sized country. So there it's not small.

Talking about the population size, which is the other determinant of how big a country is, this time, the Philippines is really among the giants. It's the 12th largest country in population. Socioculturally, population size is more of a determinant of bigness since it is dynamic, unlike land area which is less dynamic over time (land acquisitions is not in vogue now, the UN guards those predatory nations not to go back to their habit of eating chunks of countries). The people determine the fate of a nation, and even market economics see population as buyers, never the land area of a country.

Here's the list of the 15 largest countries with the population figures rounded off (taken from wikipedia):

1. China -1.32B
   
2. India -1.17B
   
3. USA -303M
   
4. Indonesia -232M
   
5. Brazil -187M
   
6. Pakistan -161M
   
7. Bangladesh -159M
   
8. Nigeria -148M
   
9. Russia -142M
   
10. Japan -128M
    
11. Mexico -103
    
12. Philippines -89M
    
13. Vietnam -87M
    
14. Germany -82M
    
15. Ethiopia -77M

A short analysis of the list:
The Philippines can be peered with Vietnam (land area: 332T), Germany (land area: 357T). These three countries can be called the 80/300 (for 80M pop and land area 300T). Before the second half of the 21st century, the Philippines however will have a population same as Japan today (Japan land area: 378M). In Southeast Asia, the Philippines is a long-time 3rd after Indonesia and Vietnam, it surpasses Vietnam in the early 2000's.
The billion-pop countries of India and China, are also the most developing economies. These are indeed large countries both in land area and population. The Indian subcontinent is really the most populous place on Earth (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan). Africa is represented here by Nigeria and Ethiopia.
There are four OECD countries in this list (USA, Japan, Mexico and Germany) and also four members in the G8 (USA, Russia, Japan, Germany). Most would really not expect Germany to be that populous. In case you want to know, Australia is 53rd (pop. 21M) and Canada is 36th (pop. 33M).