Last month, a United Nations population survey estimated that a milestone may be passed in 2023. For the first time in over two millennia, China will not be the most populous society on earth. Instead India will have the largest population, and China will be second.
It’s a rare example of a global ranking where India sits higher than China, and it’s an ambivalent victory at best: a larger population does not have merit in itself, unless it is well-fed and endowed with economic prospects. China has other number 2 rankings which may raise its standing, such as the second largest economy in the world. It is not second to India but the U.S. This is a reminder of how far the two Asian giants have come since their moments of profound political change in the late 1940s: independence for India in 1947, and the victory of the Chinese Communist Party and establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. In global power terms, China now looms above India, but the fluidity of geopolitics in the 2020s may give India advantages in the world now being shaped.
