India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous nation on Wednesday, and Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, took a jab at New Delhi by saying that saying that while assessing a country’s demographic dividend, it is also important to look at not just its size but also quality.
When asked about whether India would surpass China as the world’s most populous nation by the middle of this year, the Chinese representative stated that the most important factor is talent resources.
“When assessing a country’s demographic dividend, we need to look at not just its size but also its quality. Size matters, but what matters more is talent resources. Nearly 900 million of the 1.4 billion Chinese are of working age and on average have received 10.9 years of education,” Wang Wenbin said.
Notably, according to the UN’s world population dashboard, India now has 1428.6 million people, outnumbering China’s population of 1425.7 million. Since the UN started compiling population statistics in 1950, India has never come in first place on the list of most populous nations.
The United States ranks third with an estimated 340 million citizens.
Wenbin remarked that the average length of education for people who have just entered the workforce has climbed to 14 years in his discussion of the Chinese labour market. This is so because China has enacted a third-child policy and other supportive measures to deal with demographic shifts as part of a national effort to address population ageing.
India last conducted a census in 2011, hence the country’s population size is not yet known with certainty.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused the once every 10 years census in India, which was scheduled to take place in 2021, to be postponed.
