China finds itself ensnared by an unusual phenomenon characterized by plummeting birth rates. Interestingly, the birth rate has experienced a 40% decline over the past five years. According to official projections, the range of newborns for the year 2023 is anticipated to fall between 7 million and 8 million, marking the lowest tally in 85 […]
Jan 17: The population in 2022 - 1.4118 billion - fell by 850,000 from 2021.
China's birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to slow the trend.
But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has e
DEC 21: The Asian giants already have more than 1.4 billion people each, and for over 70 years have accounted for more than a third of the global population.
China's population is likely to begin shrinking next year. Last year, 10.6 million people were born, a little more than the number of deaths, thanks to a rapid drop in fertility rate. India's fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades - from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today - but the rate of decline has been slower.
So what does India overtaking China as the most populous country in the world mean?
China reduced its population faster than India
China reduced its population growth rate by about half from 2% in 1973 to 1.1% in 1983.
Demographers say much of this was achieved by riding roughshod over human rights - two separate campaigns promoting just one child and then later marriages, longer gaps between children and fewer of them - in what was a predominantly rural and overwhelmingly uneducated and poor country.
India saw rapid population growth - almost 2% annually - for much of the second half of the last century. Over time, death rates fell, life expectancy rose and incomes went up. More people - especially those living in cities - accessed clean drinking water and modern sewerage. "Yet the birth rate remained high," says Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics.
India launched a family planning programme in 1952 and laid out a national population policy for the first time only in 1976, around the time China was busy reducing its birth rate.
But forced sterilisations of millions of poor people in an overzealous family planning programme during the 1975 Emergency - when civil liberties were suspended - led to a social backlash against family planning. "Fertility decline would have been faster for India if the Emergency hadn't happened and if politicians had been more proactive. It also meant that all subsequent governments treaded cautiously when it came to family planning," Prof Dyson says.
East Asian countries such as Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand, which launched population programmes much later than India, achieved lower fertility levels, cut infant and maternal mortality rates, raised incomes and improved human development earlier than India.
Yet India is not undergoing a population explosion
India has added more than a billion people since Independence in 1947, and its population is expected to grow for another 40 years. But its population growth rate has been declining for decades now, and the country has defied dire predictions about a "demographic disaster".
So India having more people than China is no longer significant in a "concerning" way, say demographers.
Rising incomes and improved access to health and education have helped Indian women have fewer children than before, effectively flattening the growth curve. Fertility rates have dipped below replacement levels - two births per woman - in 17 out of 22 states and federally administered territories. (A replacement level is one at which new births are sufficient to maintain a steady population.)
The decline in birth rates has been faster in southern India than in the more populous north. "It is a pity that more of India could not have been like south India," says Prof Dyson. "All things being equal, rapid population growth in parts of north India have depressed living standards".
However, overtaking China could be significant
It could, for example, strengthen India's claim of getting a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which has five permanent members, including China.
India is a founding member of the UN and has always insisted that its claim to a permanent seat is just. "I think you have certain claims on things [by being the country with largest population]," says John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The way India's demography is changing is also significant, according to KS James of the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences.
Despite drawbacks, India deserves some credit for managing a "healthy demographic transition" by using family planning in a democracy which was both poor and largely uneducated, says Mr James. "Most countries did this after they had achieved higher literacy and living standards."
More good news. One in five people below 25 years in the world is from India and 47% of Indians are below the age of 25. Two-thirds of Indians were born after India liberalised its economy in the early 1990s. This group of young Indians have some unique characteristics, says Shruti Rajagopalan, an economist, in a new paper. "This generation of young Indians will be the largest consumer and labour source in the knowledge and network goods economy. Indians will be the largest pool of global talent," she says.
But there are challenges too
India needs to create enough jobs for its young working age population to reap a demographic dividend. But only 40% of of India's working-age population works or wants to work, according to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
More women would need jobs as they spend less time in their working age giving birth and looking after children. The picture here is bleaker: only 10% of working-age women were participating in the labour force in October, according to CMIE, compared with 69% in China.
Then there's migration. Some 200 million Indians have migrated within the country - between states and districts - and their numbers are bound to grow. Most are workers who leave villages for cities to find work. "Our cities will grow as migration increases because of lack of jobs and low wages in villages. Can they provide migrants a reasonable living standard? Otherwise, we will end up with more slums and disease," says S Irudaya Rajan, a migration expert at Kerala's International Institute of Migration and Development.
Demographers say India also needs to stop child marriages, prevent early marriages and properly register births and deaths. A skewed sex ratio at birth - meaning more boys are born than girls - remains a worry. Political rhetoric about "population control" appears to be targeted at Muslims, the country's largest minority when, in reality, "gaps in childbearing between India's religious groups are generally much smaller than they used to be", according to a study from Pew Research Center.
And then there's the ageing of India
Demographers say the ageing of India receives little attention.
In 1947, India's median age was 21. A paltry 5% of people were above the age of 60. Today, the median age is over 28, and more than 10% of Indians are over 60 years. Southern states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu achieved replacement levels at least 20 years ago.
"As the working-age population declines, supporting an older population will become a growing burden on the government's resources," says Rukmini S, author of Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India.
"Family structures will have to be recast and elderly persons living alone will become an increasing source of concern," she says.
MARCH 10: Yoon, a political novice, edged out a victory over the Democratic Party's Lee Jae-myung based on promises to tackle class inequality.
He called his win a "victory of the great South Korean people".
But the result was one of the closest in history - with the final count separated by less than 1%.
Early on Thursday morning, Mr Yoon told supporters at his victory ceremony he would "pay attention to people's livelihoods, provide warm welfare services to the needy, and make utmost efforts so that our country serves as a proud, responsible member of the international community and the free world".
Both presidential candidates were viewed as widely unpopular throughout the campaign. Analysts said voters appeared so disenchanted by the frontrunners that local media dubbed the vote "election of the unfavourables".
Still, Wednesday's election saw a high turn out, with 77% of eligible voters casting a ballot.
Top of voters' concerns were skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, stubborn youth unemployment and gender inequality.
Mr Yoon had also made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of his campaign.
The ministry largely provides family-based services, education, and social welfare for children and spends around 0.2% of the nation's annual budget - less than 3% of which goes towards the promotion of equality for women.
During his campaign Mr Yoon had also leant heavily into a support base of young men, some of whom declared that there was no systemic gender discrimination in South Korea.
Demographic breakdowns of the vote showed that many had voted for the third female candidate Sim Sang-ju who'd advocated for gender equality, the BBC's Laura Bicker reports.
In the foreign policy space, Yoon has promised a tougher "reset" on relations with China and North Korea and indications of closer ties with the US.
The White House has already sent its congratulations to Mr Yoon, saying US President Joe Biden is looking forward to further expanding the two countries ties
Yoon will become president but with a Democratic Party-majority in the single-house National Assembly. The incumbent Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party had to step down due to constitutional five-year limits of the presidential term.
Who is Yoon Suk-yeol?
South Korea is about to usher in a new era as a conservative has won the battle to be president. But only just.
Yoon Suk-yeol's victory over his liberal rival Lee Jae-myung is far from decisive. He has won the presidency by less than one per cent - a sign of just how bitterly divided politics in the world's tenth largest economy has become.
Mr Yoon only entered politics last year and rose to prominence for successfully prosecuting the former conservative president Park Geun-hye on bribery and corruption charges.
The political novice has been compared to the former United States president Donald Trump and has been prone to gaffes throughout the campaign.
He had to walk back a comment that the authoritarian president Chun Doo-hwan, who was responsible for massacring protestors in 1980, was "good at politics".
He has pledged to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and has blamed the rise of feminism for the low birth rate in a country which has one of the worst records on women's rights in the developed world.
He is more hawkish on foreign policy than the current liberal leader Moon Jae-in.
He has said he will aim to develop technology to carry out a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if Pyongyang looks to attack Seoul and he supports sanctions on Kim Jong-un's regime which will bring him more in line with the policies of South Korea's main ally, the United States.
He wants to be tougher on China and proposed that South Korea should co-operate more fully with the Quad security alliance between the US, Australia, India and Japan, an informal grouping created to counter Beijing's growing influence in the region. But he stopped short of saying Seoul should join the alliance.
His views on foreign policy are a decisive shift from his predecessor who favoured engagement with Pyongyang and largely avoided taking a stance that would inflame China, the country's largest trading partner.
BBC
China's birth rate plummeted to a record low last year, official data showed Monday, as analysts warn that faster-than-expected ageing could deepen economic growth concerns.
Beijing has been grappling with a looming demographic crisis as it faces a rapidly ageing workforce, slowing economy and the country's weakest population growth in decades.
per 1,000 people, according to National Bureau of Statistics data, down from 8.52 in 2020.
The figures are the lowest since records began in 1949, when Communist China was founded, according to NBS data.
It also marks the lowest figure logged in China's annual Statistical Yearbook data -- a yearly assessment of the country's economy -- dating back to 1978.
Although officials relaxed the nation's one-child policy in 2016 -- allowing couples to have two children and easing some of the world's strictest family planning regulations -- the changes have failed to bring about a baby boom.
Last year, Chinese authorities extended the policy further to allow couples to have three children.
But in 2021, the country logged 10.62 million births, according to official data, bringing its population to 1.41 billion.
The natural population growth rate plunged to 0.34 per 1,000 people, from an earlier 1.45 figure.
"The demographic challenge is well known but the speed of population aging is clearly faster than expected," said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.
"It also indicates China's potential growth is likely slowing faster than expected," he said.
Last year, results of a once-in-a-decade census showed that China's population had grown at its slowest rate since the 1960s.
Higher costs of living and a cultural shift, with people now used to smaller families, have been cited as reasons behind the lower number of babies.
The one-child policy was introduced by top leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980 to curb population growth and promote economic development, with exceptions for rural families whose first-born was a female and for ethnic minorities.
China sends over 4,000 tons of rice to Syria as humanitarian aid
DAMASCUS, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Syria received more than 4,000 tons of rice from China on Sunday, the latest in a long line of humanitarian supplies China has provided to Syria to ease the Syrian people's suffering.
Feng Biao, China's ambassador to Syria, signed a delivery note with Khaled Hboubati, the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), at the headquarters of SARC in Damascus, for the food aid.
Hboubati thanked China for its assistance to the Syrian people, as he signed the receipt document for the food supply.
The Chinese ambassador hoped his country's continued assistance will alleviate the Syrian people's suffering.
"We hope that the aid will help to alleviate the suffering of Syrians, and on this occasion, I would like to express my gratitude to the SARC for their collaboration," the ambassador said.
