- Wednesday, November 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
China on Wednesday (19) downplayed its southern neighbour India overtaking it as the world’s most populous nation saying it still has a “quality” workforce of nearly 900 million people to give a strong impetus for development.
India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country with 1.4286 billion people, the latest United Nations Population Fund (formerly United Nations Fund for Population Activities) data have shown. China has a population of 1.4257 billion and is now the second-most populous nation.
When asked for a reaction to the report at a media briefing in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China’s foreign ministry, said, “I want to tell you that population dividend does not depend on quantity but also quality”.
The population is important and so is the talent, he said about China, the world’s second-largest economy after the US.
“China’s population is over 1.4 billion. Those in the working age is close to 900 million and that group of populations is 10.5 years of education on average,” he said.
Wang also said China has taken active measures to deal with the ageing population.
“As premier Li Qiang pointed out our population dividend has not disappeared and our talent dividend is booming and the impetus is strong for development,” Wang said.
According to a new UNFPA report, 25 per cent of India’s population is in the age group of 0-14 years, 18 per cent in the 10 to 19 age group, 26 per cent in the age bracket of 10 to 24 years, 68 per cent in 15 to 64 years age group, and 7 per cent above 65 years.
In March, Chinese premier Li Qiang while addressing the media after he took over the post said, “when assessing demographic dividend, we shall not just look at the sheer size of the population but also look at the scale of high-caliber workforce.”
On China’s worsening demographic crisis due to falling birth rates and an increasing old age population, Li said China has nearly 900 million working-age population and 15 million people join the workforce annually, he noted.
More than 240 million people have received higher education in China, and the average length of education received by newcomers into the workforce has increased to 14 years, he said.
China’s demographic crisis deepened in 2022 as its population entered a negative phase with the birth rate declining by 8.50 lakh (0.85 million) people to 1.4118 billion.
China’s overall population declined by 850,000 people year-on-year to 1.4118 billion in 2022, putting the natural growth rate at negative 0.6 per 1,000 people, its National Bureau of Statistics said in January this year.
The country’s total population size peaked in 2022, much earlier than expected, which means the country’s population will maintain negative growth from 2023 or enter an era of negative growth, Cai Fang, former deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said previously.
Yuan Xin, a professor from the Institute of Population and Development at Nankai University’s School of Economics, told the official media in January that in 2022 negative population growth is the inevitable result of the country’s long-term low fertility rate, and China’s population has entered an era of zero growth.
(With PTI inputs)
