A recently published new UN report says that the world’s population will reach 8 billion people around the middle of November this year. At the same time, next year, according to forecasts, India will overtake China in terms of the number of inhabitants. While Russia and Japan, which were firmly in the top ten countries of the world in 2000, will completely drop out of this list by about 2050, The Washington Times reports.
Although poverty and overpopulation are likely to remain serious problems for India in the near future, it will soon be able to overtake China and reach the symbolic first place in the world in terms of the number of inhabitants, writes The Washington Times. According to a recent statement by UN experts, India will officially become the most populous next year a country of the world.
And this fact can significantly increase its status on the world stage, where it traditionally competes with China, the article emphasizes. “The idea of turning India into the most populous country in the world definitely carries something powerful,” Michael Kugelman, an expert on South Asia from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, told The Washington Times.
“It is very important for India to be able to surpass China, its larger and more powerful strategic rival, on any front,” Kugelman stressed. “This says a lot about India’s power, its geostrategic significance and, in general, about its place in the world, where it has long sought to assume a more significant role,” he said.
A new UN report entitled “World Population Prospects for 2022”, the publication of which coincided with the World Population Day celebrated in July, states that by the middle of November this year, the world population will reach 8 billion people. UN experts also predict that next year India will overtake China and take the first place in the world in terms of population, reports The Washington Times.
The U.S. Census Bureau currently estimates the U.S. population at about 337 million people. While the number of residents of India and China, according to the UN report, is now about 1.4 billion people in each country. At the same time, these figures are causing controversy among scientists due to the uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the article explains.
According to the 2011 Census of India, the country’s population at that time was 1.21 billion people. The census is usually held there every ten years, but in 2021 the authorities decided to postpone it due to the pandemic.
The UN Population Report also acknowledges that the pandemic has “affected all components of population change, including fertility, mortality and migration.” However, UN experts predict that in the next two decades, India will experience a significant increase in the number of inhabitants, while China is expected to have an absolute population decline in 2023.
Beijing’s reaction to the publication of this report, which states that its main economic and military rival in the Indo-Pacific region, India, will take away from it the title of the most populous country in the world next year, which China has worn for centuries, was rather restrained, the article notes. While the Indian authorities expressed restrained satisfaction in response.
However, some media outlets in India did not restrain their glee, proclaiming these forecasts. “In just a few months, the population of India will surpass the population of China, and this will be a historic shift that was last observed 300 years ago,” The Times of India, one of the country’s most influential newspapers, hastened to announce. The article also noted that more than 63 thousand children are born in India every day, while in China — only about 29 thousand.
“The population of China in 2022 decreased for the first time in 60 years, while the population of India will continue to grow over the next 40 years,” emphasizes The Times of India. In turn, the Press Trust of India quoted the words of the UN Population Representative John Wilmot. He said at a press conference that India’s transformation into the most populous country could “strengthen” the so-far unsuccessful campaign for it to achieve the right to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Analysts studying the problems of this region also generally agree that this event deserves close attention, given all its possible consequences for the global hierarchy in the short and long term, The Washington Times reports.
At the same time Kugelman warns that India’s transformation into the world’s most populous country will also “exacerbate some of the long-standing and currently insurmountable problems” faced by authorities and local residents. “India’s population growth has contributed to persistent poverty and unemployment. This prevented New Delhi from benefiting from its “demographic dividend,” the expert stressed in an interview with The Washington Times.
He explained that, in fact, this prevented India from taking advantage of having such a large number of young people, because not enough jobs were created for them in the country. And besides, too many of them lack education and the necessary professional skills to find a job and make a significant contribution to the economic growth of the whole country, the expert stated.
World Bank statistics also show that India continues to rise in the world ranking in terms of gross domestic product, but it still has a long way to go before it can challenge China or the United States economically. According to statistics, in 2021, India ranked only sixth in the world in terms of GDP, only slightly ahead of France, which now has a population of about 65 million people, reports The Washington Times.
As for the reasons for the population decline in China, they are quite diverse. But the most important of them, according to analysts, is related to the long—term consequences of the “One Family, one child” policy, which Beijing began to apply to curb population growth back in the 1980s, when China was a much poorer country. Concern caused by a marked decline in population growth and fertility rates has prompted the Government to soften this policy in recent years.: in 2016, the Chinese were allowed to have two children, and in 2021 — even three children per family.
However, it is still difficult to say how this will affect the situation in the long term, the article notes. At the same time, Chinese experts and state media have recently been paying more and more attention to the negative consequences of population decline. Some attribute China’s population growth to its modern achievements and fear that the reduction in the number of residents will negatively affect its economic potential.
“The general scheme of social and economic development should be adjusted to adapt to the new model of population growth,” said Lu Zehua, professor of sociology at Peking University. China used to rely on “demographic dividends” for a long time to stimulate its economic development, but in the near future this indicator may gradually decrease or even become negative, he warned.
Taking this into account, the Chinese authorities should carefully study possible advantages in areas beyond the “demographic dividend” so that the overall “quality of the population” can be fully improved and new conditions for the economic development of the country can be created, the Chinese expert stressed in an interview with the Global Times.
Overall ratings reflecting the actual population of different countries over time can also show where in the world there may be opportunities for progress — or, conversely, likely problems, the article says. For example, back in 2000, Nigeria was the only African country that managed to get into the top ten most populous countries in the world.
At that time, she was only in tenth place. However, by 2050, according to the forecasts of demographers from the UN, Nigeria will become the third in the world and will be able to overtake the United States, while Congo and Ethiopia will also enter the top ten. While Russia and Japan, which were firmly in the top 10 in 2000, will completely drop out of the list by this point if current demographic trends continue, The Washington Times concludes.
Original news InoTV :
https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2022-08-11/WT-Indiya-skoro-obgonit-Kitaj
