Beijing: Western press have sensationalised the UN population report, which on Wednesday said India will overtake China’s population in mid-2023, to “badmouth” and allege “China’s development is going to run into big trouble”, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said in a strongly-worded comment piece on Thursday.
Separate commentaries in state-run Chinese media including in the tabloid Global Times sought to play down the landmark crossover, collating comments from experts who questioned India’s ability to take advantage of its demographic dividend or the advantages of having a younger population.
The CCTV commentary in Mandarin called Western media reports an “attempt to use the topic of the ‘change of ownership of the first populous country’ to slander China” and an effort to “encourage the relocation of related industries away from China”.
The reports also focused on “decoupling and breaking the chain” to suppress China’s development momentum, the commentary said. “They slandered all the way and China has developed all the way, creating a miracle of sustainable and stable economic development with a huge population,” the commentary said.
Chinese state media was reacting to the landmark UN Population Fund (UNFPA) report “8 Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities: The case for rights and choices”, which said India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by mid-year with nearly 3 million people more than the latter.
“For some time now, the Western media have been throwing out a series of sensationalist reports with the subtext that China’s development is going to run into big trouble,” the CCTV commentary said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Wednesday said population dividends did not only depend on quantity but also on quality. “When assessing a country’s demographic dividend, we need to look at not just its size but also its quality. 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,” Wang told reporters.
Separately, the tabloid Global Times questioned India’s development status to extract demographic dividend, quoting experts. “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,” the tabloid quoted experts as saying.
One expert the tabloid quoted by name, Yuan Xin, a professor at the Institute of Population and Development at Nankai University’s School of Economics, said: “Demographic changes bring specific challenges to the economic and social system, yet at the same time provide new demographic opportunities”.
“Whether India can truly reap the demographic dividend lies in the future economic and social development path and mode,” Yuan said.
“The expanding population would be a double-edged sword for the (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi government to face in national elections,” Lan Jianxue, director of the Department of Asia-Pacific Studies at China Institute of International Studies, said.
