India’s Population Surpasses China – Economy and Military to Follow

ANALYSIS – THE NEW SUPERPOWER – India, with its steady population growth, will soon officially become the world’s most populous nation on earth. This, as China’s population has begun to shrink.

Even though India’s population growth has slowed since 2011, India’s population is projected to pass China’s 1.4 billion sometime this year.

In China, some one million fewer babies were born in 2022 than a year earlier (9.6 vs. 10.6 million), the lowest level since at least 1950.

Meanwhile, almost a million more people died than were born (10.4 million).

China’s working-age population (16 to 59) has also dropped from 70% a decade ago to 62% today, a bad trend, which should only worsen.

As I have written before, both these trends (growing Indian population vs. shrinking Chinese population) are very bad for China.

But what is worse are the two other major related areas where India may soon catch up to China.

The first is the economy.

India has big economic plans. Its economy is on a tear and, within five years, could become the world’s third largest, following the U.S. and China.

Meanwhile, China’s economy is suffering from its draconian COVID crackdown, and other long-term systemic issues – a declining population being just one of them.

But all things combined, China’s demographic decline, with its decreasing and aging population, combined with geopolitical tensions, could enable India, with its youthful, educated workforce, to supplant China as the “world’s factory.”

India’s economic growth of 5.5% over the last 10 years has allowed it to overtake the U.K. as the fifth-largest economy, and it is expected to pass Germany and Japan by 2028, according to the IMF.

That would place it just behind the United States and China.

India has tried and failed to become an economic powerhouse before, but this time New Delhi is spending nearly 20% of its budget on capital investments and infrastructure to attract manufacturers.

This includes U.S. companies, including Microsoft and Apple, which have been expanding in India, even as they consider shrinking their footprints in China.

Apple’s shipments of India-made iPhones doubled in value between April and December 2022.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election win in 2014, aided by his “Make in India” campaign, India’s highway network has become 50% longer and domestic air passengers have roughly doubled.

Traditionally, gems, jewelry, textiles and wood were among India’s key exports, but now two-thirds of the country’s exports consist of manufactured goods, including engineered items, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

The second critical area where India could at least catch up to China would, of course, be India’s military power, which, if grown effectively, could severely hamper China’s global ambitions.

While it still has a long way to go militarily to match China, it is a full-fledged nuclear power (estimates suggest that India has 160 nuclear weapons and has enough weapons-grade plutonium for up to 200 nuclear weapons), and India recently launched its first indigenously produced aircraft carrier.

This carrier is one big sign of India’s growing military ambition.

The home-built INS Vikrant has catapulted India into a small club of nations that can build these powerful warships.

India has had aircraft carriers before, but those were built either by the British or the Russians.

The INS Vikramaditya, which was commissioned in 2013 and which is currently the Navy’s only aircraft carrier, started out as the Soviet-Russian warship ‘Admiral Gorshkov.’

India’s two earlier carriers, the INS Vikrant and the INS Viraat, were originally the British-built HMS Hercules and HMS Hermes. The first was commissioned into the Indian Navy in 1961, and the second in 1987.

The Indian Navy has been asking to build a third aircraft carrier which would become India’s second Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC-2).

This proposed carrier, to be named INS Vishal, would be a giant 65,000-ton vessel, much bigger than both IAC-1 and the INS Vikramaditya.

Although there is still a big gap between the Vikrant and China’s third aircraft carrier Fujian, launched in June, India’s long road to producing the Vikrant, (similar in process but much longer than the path China has followed) shows New Delhi’s ambition and determination to become a maritime power.

Along with a strengthened air force and army, Beijing might soon need to worry about the Indian military it has long disdained.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

READ NEXT: Top Florida Republican Announces 2024 Plans >>