China said on Wednesday that it still has a “quality” workforce of close to 900 million people to provide a strong push for growth, trying to minimize India surpassing it as the world’s most populated country with 142.86 crore people.
India has overtaken China to become the world’s most populated country, according to the most recent figures from the United Nations Population Fund, with 142.86 crore inhabitants. According to the UN global population dashboard, China, which has 142.57 crore people, is currently the second most populated nation.
When asked about the study, Wang Wenbin, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a media conference that “we need to look at not only the quantity but also the quality of a country’s people”
“Size counts, but talent resource matters more. Out of the 1.4 billion Chinese, about 900 million are of working age and have, on average, completed 10.9 years of school, according to him.
The average duration of schooling for people who have just joined the workforce has increased to 14 years, he added.
In response to the aging population, he said that China had established a national plan, which included a third-child policy and auxiliary measures to deal with demographic shifts.
The population of China exceeds 1.4 billion. Over 900 million people are of working age, and they have an average of 10.5 years of schooling, according to him.
According to Wang, China has actively fought against the aging population.
“China’s demographic dividend has not vanished, as Premier Li Qiang said, and our talent dividend is developing. The engine for China’s growth is still robust, he remarked.
A recent UNFPA research states that 25% of India’s population is under the age of 14, 18% is between the ages of 10 and 19, 26% is between the ages of 10 and 24, 68% is between the ages of 15 and 64, and 7% is older than 65.
“When measuring demographic dividend, we will not only look at the sheer quantity of the population but also look at the scale of high-caliber workforce,” Premier Li Qiang stated in a statement to the media in March, shortly after assuming the position. On China’s escalating demographic issue brought on by declining birth rates and an aging population, Li observed that 15 million individuals enter the workforce each year in China, which has about 900 million people of working age.
According to him, more than 240 million Chinese citizens have completed higher education, and the typical amount of time spent in school before entering the job has climbed to 14 years.
When China’s population entered a negative phase in 2022 and the birth rate fell by 8.50 lakh to 1.4118 billion, the country’s demographic issue became worse.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in January of this year, China’s total population is expected to decrease by 850,000 people annually to 1.4118 billion in 2022, with a natural growth rate of -0.6 per 1,000 people.
In mainland China, there were 264 million persons over the age of 60 as of the end of 2020, and the National Health Commission projects that number to rise to 400 million and represent more than 30% of China’s population by 2035.
The Communist Party of China (CPC), which is now in power in China, followed the One-China policy for decades in an effort to manage the country’s population.
A fast aging population is China’s current worry, rather than just a shrinking population, which was made worse by the decades-old one Child policy that was abandoned in 2016. The updated regulation allowed Chinese citizens to have three children.
In May 2021, China enacted a third-child restriction and launched a number of stimulus programs to encourage population growth. Across the nation, a number of towns, provinces, and regions have implemented incentive programs, such as giving incentives to families that have a second or third child.
The nation reported roughly 9.56 million new births in 2018, down from 10.62 million in 2021, according to the NBS statement.
China’s birth rate decreased from 7.52 per 1,000 people in 2021 to 6.77 in 2022.
According to Cai Fang, a former deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China’s population reached its peak in 2022, which was far sooner than anticipated, and would either continue to experience negative growth from 2023 or enter a period of it.
According to Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University’s School of Economics’ Institute of Population and Development, China’s population will reach zero growth in 2022 due to the nation’s historically low fertility rate. Yuan Xin made this statement to the official media in January.
