We’ve quality: China on India becoming most populous country

TIL Desk/World/Beijing/ China on Wednesday sought to downplay India overtaking it as the world’s most populous nation with 142.86 crore people, saying that it still has a ‘quality’ workforce of close to 900 million people to provide a strong impetus for development.

According to the latest United Nations Population Fund data, India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous nation with 142.86 crore people. China which has a population of 142.57 crore has now become the second most populous country, the UN world population dashboard showed.

Asked for his reaction to the report, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing in Beijing ‘when assessing a country’s demographic dividend, we need to look at not just the size but also the quality of its population’.

“Size matters, but what matters more is talent resource. Nearly 900 million out of the 1.4 billion Chinese are of working age and on average have received 10.9 years of education,” he said. For those who have newly entered the workforce, their average length of education has risen to 14 years, he said.