Will India Will Surpass China as Most Populus Country in 2023? Covid lockdowns and the increasing uncertainty associated with China’s covid response has lowered the birthrate significantly. Chinese demographers previously projected that India would become the world's most populous country in 2027. However, falling birth rates are accelerating that projection to as early as perhaps as early as 2023.

When I founded BayCare in China in the mid-1990’s live births were routinely between 25 million and 27 million a year. By contrast, 14.65 million infants were born in 2019, 12 million in 2020, and 10.6 million babies were born in 2021. That is a dramatic change over the past 3 years.

Much of this change is driven by demographics. According to the existing data, in the next 10 years, the number of women aged 22 to 35, which is the prime childbearing period, will drop by more than 30 per cent.

So, what are the implications? Slower GDP growth for one as household formation is a significant contributor to gross domestic product. So stronger economic headwinds. And then there is the flip side of an aging population and the increasing social and medical costs. China has some of the youngest retirement ages in the world, with the official retirement age for men at 60 and blue-collar female workers can retire at 50.

But there is also the interesting question of national identity. For the last 2000 years, China has been the world’s most populous country, but soon that distinction goes to India. China has also been for most of the last two millenium the world’s largest economy, but that aspiration also seems to be slipping away given that the recently the US economy is growing faster than China’s.

What does it all mean for China? For the CCP whose legitimacy rests on restoring China’s status in the world?

Your thoughts?