In 2023, India will be the most populous country in the world, while China is currently experiencing a demographic crisis. The “crown” has no value in itself, but it is a signal that it is important, writes The Economist in the article “The fatter the elephant, the thinner the dragon”, published in the edition dedicated to New Year’s trends. .

China has been the most populous country in the world for hundreds of years. In 1750, it had an estimated population of 225 million, more than a quarter of the world’s population. India, which was not a politically unified country at the time, had approximately 200 million inhabitants, making it the second largest country.

India’s population will surpass China’s in the spring

He will take the crown in 2023. According to UN estimates, on April 14, the population of India will exceed the population of China. According to estimates, the population of India will be 1,425,775,850 in the coming days.

The fact that India does not have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, while China does, will seem like an even bigger anomaly.

Although China’s economy is almost six times larger, India’s growing population will help it catch up. By 2050, India is expected to account for more than one-sixth of the growth in the world’s working-age (15-64) population.

China’s population, on the other hand, is in rapid decline. The number of working-age Chinese reached its peak ten years ago. By 2050, the average age of the country’s population will be 51 years, which is 12 years more than today. Aging China will have to work harder to maintain its political and economic influence, writes “The Economist”.

China will pay for its demographic policy

Both countries took draconian measures in the 20th century to limit population growth. The famine of 1959-61, caused by China’s “Great Leap Forward,” was an important factor in convincing the Communist Party of the need to limit population growth.

A decade later, China launched a “later, less, less” campaign — later marriages, longer child spacing and fewer children. It has had a greater effect than the better-known policy, the one-child policy, introduced in 1980, says Tim Dyson, a British demographer.

The drop in fertility from more than six children per woman in the late 1960s to fewer than three in the late 1970s was the fastest in history for any large population group, an expert says.

But it paid off. China’s economic miracle was partly the result of an increase in the ratio of working-age adults to children and the elderly from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

With fewer mouths to feed, parents could invest more in each child than they otherwise would. But having more parents than children, an advantage when the children are young, becomes a disadvantage as the parents get older.

The country will now pay the price as the boomer generation retires and becomes dependent on the younger generation that will follow.

India and forced sterilization

India’s attempt to reduce the birth rate has been less successful. It was the first country to introduce family planning on a national scale in the 1950s.

Mass sterilization campaigns encouraged by Western donors gained momentum and were intensified during the 1975-77 Emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Under the leadership of her son Sanjay, the government forced men to enroll in vasectomy camps under the threat of a pay cut or job loss. The police caught poor people at train stations for sterilization. Approximately 2,000 men died as a result of botched procedures.

Forced sterilization stopped after Indira Gandhi lost the election. Although this campaign was brutal, it was not thorough enough to cause India’s birthrate to plummet. India’s birth rate has declined, but less and more slowly than China’s.

With a median age of 28 and a growing working-age population, India now has a chance to reap its own demographic dividend. Its economy recently overtook Britain’s as the world’s fifth largest and will take third place by 2029, according to forecasts by the State Bank of India.

Prosperity depends on the younger generation

But India’s prosperity depends on the productivity of its young population, which is not as high as China’s. Less than half of Indian adults are in the workforce, compared to two-thirds in China. Chinese people aged 25 and over study on average 1.5 years longer than Indians of the same age.

This will not save China from the consequences of the demographic crisis it created. In 2016, the government ended the one-child policy and lifted all family size restrictions in 2021.

But the birth rate continued to fall. China’s zero-child policy has made young people even more reluctant to have children. The government is also facing resistance to its plans to raise the average retirement age, which is one of the lowest in the world (54).

The main pension fund could run out of money by 2035. However, perhaps the most painful thing for China will be the emergence of India as a superpower at its door, concludes The Economist, adopted by News.ro.

(article photo: DreamsTime.com)