Is the worlds most populous country about to chang

The time has come. The United Nations officially announced that the world population has exceeded 8 billion.

When we feel more and more people, we don't know:

A great change has begun quietly.

The most populous country is about to change?

Although China still firmly holds the title of the largest country with the largest population, it will soon be overtaken by India if nothing happens.

At present, the total population difference between China and India is only 16 million, and the natural growth rate of the national permanent population is only 0.03%, while that of India is 0.99%.

Therefore, at this rate, India's population will surpass ours as soon as next year.

Looking back at the global situation:

According to the prediction of the United Nations, the global population will exceed 10 billion in 2050, and then reach the peak of 10.4 billion in 2080.

There is no doubt that although the population growth rate and fertility rate have decreased significantly, the global population is still growing.

Based on past experience, the global population will increase by about 1 billion every 10-12 years on average.

In 2011, the global population had just reached 7 billion. Now, 11 years later, it has grown to 8 billion.

In the past decade, although China has remained the largest country with the largest population, India has the fastest population growth rate.

According to the World Population Outlook 2022 report, India is expected to become the first populous country as early as 2023.

In the past few hundred years, China has ranked first in the world population list, accounting for 1/4 of the world population at its peak, 300 million higher than India.

But now India is catching up.

From the above table, we can see that we have been left behind by India in terms of birth population and total fertility.

Not surprisingly, the outcome of the tussle between the two populous countries will change next year.

Our generation will also witness the change of the title of "the largest country with the largest population", and there will be more changes behind the event.

Under the demographic change, a global industrial revolution is taking place.

In the face of data, it would be too superficial if the discussion remained "too many people will lead to resource shortage" or "low fertility and population crisis".

In fact, the slowing down of population growth does not mean the disappearance of the demographic dividend, but should be seen in combination with the following indicators:

What is the proportion of labor force? How about aging? What is the age distribution?

So, what is the current population structure of China?

According to the latest data of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in 2021, the population of China aged 60 and above will reach 267 million, an increase of 9.92 million over the previous year;

According to the data of the World Bank, the aging rate of China has exceeded 14%. Although it is 28.6% higher than that of Japan, it is 7% higher than that of India and 7.7% higher than that of Vietnam.

I talked with friends who have been to Japan before, and talked about that many taxi drivers in Japan are white haired, and the waiters in the restaurant are too old.

Now, such situations are gradually emerging around us.

I wonder if you have noticed that the security guards in many communities are getting older; The age of cleaning aunts is also increasing.

These data and phenomena show that China's youth labor force is decreasing compared with the past.

Indeed, the median age of the population has reached 38.4 years, which is catching up with developed countries.

By contrast, India and Vietnam are 27.9 and 32.4 years old respectively.

That is to say, Vietnam and India have more skilled workers, and their advantages will continue to expand in the future.

According to the United Nations report, the two countries have not yet fallen into the dilemma of "fewer children" and "aging".

Even by 2050, India is expected to increase its labor force by 183 million, monopolizing 22% of the world's new labor force in the next 30 years.

It can be predicted that in the future, these countries will undertake the transfer of more labor-intensive industries in the world and stir up the pattern of global economy and trade.

At present, the electronic industry, machinery manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, clothing and textile industries are gradually shifting to Vietnam and India.

For example, as early as 2020, Apple had plans to transfer 1/5 of China's industrial chain to factories in India, and another factory of Hyundai Motor in South Korea was located in Vietnam.

Then, someone must ask:

Will India and Vietnam, with more young labor, impact China's voice in the global labor market?

Population dividend vs population trap?

As mentioned above, with the change of population pattern, a new round of global industrial transfer is inevitable.

Then, will China lose its voice due to the change of population structure in the future?

I wonder if you have found that what is happening in India and Vietnam is exactly what China has experienced in the past decades.

In the past few decades, one manifestation of our vigorous national fortune is that the demographic bonus card is the best time for industrialization.

China's demographic dividend was concentrated in the 1980s and 1990s and early this century. Because of the abundant labor force, a large number of cities have undertaken the industrial transfer of developed countries, which also laid the foundation for China's rapid development in the past three decades.

I looked up the photos of the southward migrant workers in the 1980s and 1990s on the Internet. Many younger brothers and sisters were busy in the factory:

At the moment, when China's demographic structure is changing, what many people have not found is that we are ushering in a new round of "dividends".

The next two decades will be an important time for the intelligent and digital transformation of the world, which means that a large number of low-end labor will be replaced by intelligent assembly lines in the next ten to twenty years.

However, China's grassroots labor force has just reached its peak and will gradually decrease in the next two decades, which is just the new wind of digital and intelligent transformation.

Simply understood, we will change from the dividend of population quantity to the dividend of population quality.

In order to catch up with this tide, we have been preparing silently for the past decades:

We have popularized basic education and strengthened higher education. Over the past three decades, China has trained 240 million college students and more than 10 million master's students.

This is a grand plan full of foresight:

With the arrival of intelligent transformation, China will truly enter the era of "learning is useful".

In the next 10 to 20 years, a large number of well educated citizens and the new generation will catch up with the intelligent transformation cycle and enter into industries and jobs with high added value. The most representative fields are industrial Internet, 5G, artificial intelligence and new energy.

From the original big screw into the factory to write code into the factory; From being an assembly line worker to a robot operator...

What China and other countries in the world will fight for next is not only "physical strength" but "intelligence".

On the contrary, for those countries that are still experiencing high population growth at the moment:

Intelligence and digitalization are not the gospel of their development, but will compete with the surplus labor force.

To put it bluntly, the more the population of those countries increases, the cheaper they will become.

A large population can only be transformed into productive forces if it has received adequate education and training.

If the level of basic education and national income does not keep up, it will only give birth to children and eventually fall into the "population trap" of economic weakness and environmental degradation because of the useless growth of population.

Finally, I want to say that population is a very subtle measurement of national strength, and we should look beyond the data to see the future trend.

Unfortunately, most people will only passively fall into panic because of their stubbornness to increase the speed.

Although the growth rate has slowed down, the second half of China's "demographic dividend" from quantity to quality is starting.

A big chess game is spreading slowly...