By Ru Cui
India is overtaking China as the world’s most populous country, according to the UN’s World Population Dashboard.
Data projections show India will have a population of 1.4286 billion by the middle of this year, while the People Republic of China (PRC) will have 1.4257 billion, according to the UN Population Fund’s (UNFPA) “State of World Population Report,” which was released Wednesday.
However, India’s infrastructure, supporting legal systems, education and other parameters cannot match its population growth, meaning that India still lacks the bridges or the preconditions to achieve its demographic dividend, Chinese experts said.
According to some experts, How to adequately meet the demand of the tens of millions of new workers each year is a huge challenge for the Indian government to address. The unemployment among young people could easily result in labile factor in the society. Whether India can truly reap the demographic dividend lies in the future economic and social development path and mode.
The PRC has had the most people in the world since at least 1950, the year UN population data began. Both the PRC and India have more than 1.4 billion people, and together they make up more than a third of the world’s 8 billion people.
The demographic dividend of a country depends on the quantity of population, but the quality of population is more important; it depends on the size of the population, but the scale of high-caliber workforce is more important.
China has a population of more than 1.4 billion, of which nearly 900 million are of working age, and the average number of years of education for the working-age population is 10.9 years, with the new entrants into the workforce having 14 years of education.
At the same time, China has implemented a national strategy to actively respond to the aging population, promoting a three-child policy with supporting measures to actively respond to demographic changes, he said.
Western media in recent years was blame that China’s development was in “big trouble” and that when the country’s demographic dividend disappears. However, China’s population dividend had not disappeared yet. “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,” and he also emphasized that “China’s demographic dividend has not disappeared, and our talent dividend is in the making. The driving force for China’s development remains strong.”
Education
China has established the world’s largest higher education system with 240 million people having received higher education. The gross enrollment rate of China’s higher education hit 57.8 percent in 2021, compared with 30 percent in 2012. Over 44.3 million students are studying at higher education institutions across the country. In 2022, China’s fiscal spending on education remained above 4 percent of its GDP for 10 consecutive years, which has laid the foundation for the country’s high-quality labor force.
China’s innovation-driven development strategy
Over 10 years into China’s innovation-driven development strategy, China saw its ranking in the Global Innovation Index jump from 34th in 2012 to 11th last year, with the economy expanding at an average annual rate of 6.6 percent between 2013 and 2021, contributing over 30 percent to world economic growth.
The country has expanded its research and development (R&D) expenditure from 1 trillion yuan ($145 billion) to 3.09 trillion yuan in the past decade, the second highest in the world, with its R&D intensity rising from 1.91 percent to 2.55 percent, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Talent dividend drives advanced manufacturing
China’s position in the global supply chain has changed dramatically in recent years: it has gradually become one of the centers of the worldwide supply chain. It can be seen from the chart that, in 2000, the global supply chain was mainly composed of centers in Germany, Japan, and the United States, with few transactions. However, after 2017, with China joining the WTO and experience a high-geared developing period, China replaced Japan as one of the centers and has become the largest one, and the trade with the other two centers increased dramatically. Considering China has already been flourishing in heavy industry and light industry areas before 2020, we believe that such changes are highly correlated with advanced manufacturing development and China will play a more significant role in the global supply chain.
From demographic dividend to talent dividend
China launched a national census in 2020, and its result shows that China’s population reached 1.44 billion. China is still a country with a large population in the world, the labor resources are still abundant. At the same time, China has entered a stage of high-quality development, and innovation-driven development has become the key to future development. To judge China’s development prospects, we should not only focus on the single indicator of population size, but also look at the quality and fineness of economic growth. In the first quarter of this year, China’s economic growth reached 4.5%, exceeding external expectations, which illustrates the problem.
Similarly, when looking at China’s “demographic dividend”, we need to look at the total quantity, but more importantly, the quality; we need to look at the population, but more importantly, the talent. Abundant human resources are still China’s outstanding advantages. More importantly, China has more than 240 million people receiving higher education, and the average number of years of education for the new labor force has reached 14 years. It can be seen that China’s “demographic dividend” has not disappeared, the “talent dividend” is taking shape, and the development momentum is still strong.
Some analysts believe that China actively responds to changes in population development, promotes “demographic dividends” to “talent dividends,” “reform dividends,” and promotes common prosperity for all people. These will become the driving force for China’s economic upgrading, and the world will continue to share dividend.
(Writer of this article Ru Cui is senior Journalist and working as Bureau Chief of China Media Group in Pakistan)
