– We go to quality – NRK Urix – Foreign news and documentaries

Former French President Charles de Gaulle once said: “China is a big country with many Chinese people.”

A fairly simple – but not incorrect – analysis of the world’s most populous country. However, they will soon lose this title.

New figures from the United Nations show that India will overtake China during the summer.

Several steps have been taken

In two months, there will be 1.4286 billion people living in India, compared to 1.4257 billion in China. This is happening after the Chinese population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, he wrote Reuters.

However, the country they call themselves Zhōngguó – “the kingdom in the middle” or “the country in the middle” – doesn’t seem to care much about this.

– Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin says that we rely not only on quantity, but also on quality.

The authorities believe that the country has taken several measures over time to avoid being harmed by a declining population.

State broadcaster CCTV believes that the West is portraying population numbers as evidence of disease, which is not true:

– The United States is intensifying its attempts to limit China’s development through further isolation, and found new arguments in the UN report. Low birth rates are common all over the world.

Abolished birth law

At the same time, the Chinese authorities are not completely ignoring the numbers. After 35 years of the one-child policy, in 2015 two children were allowed and in 2021 the number was increased to three.

Experts fear that the country could experience the same recession that struck Japan in the 1990s, when an aging population wave hit there.

Earlier this year, authorities said senior citizens made up a fifth of the population.

– The Chinese economy is entering a critical transitional period, as it can no longer rely on a large, cost-effective workforce that can drive industrialization and prosperity even further, says HSBC economist Frederick Neumann CNN.

Community lockdowns during the pandemic have cost China dearly, and economic growth was just 3 percent last year, making it one of the weakest years in half a century.

And if the Chinese economy slows, there will be consequences beyond the country’s borders as well – because it is the second largest economy in the world.

Two main challenges

Xi Jinping has ruled China with an iron fist for ten years, and is in his third five-year term.

– During Xi’s tenure, China has gained more economic and military power relative to other countries than at any other time in recent history, says Gu Eng Beckevold, senior advisor at the Institute for Defense Studies (IFS).

Under Xi, China officially abolished poverty in the country.

Beckevold believes there are two challenges in particular that Xi will face in the coming years:

– First, to maintain the sustainable growth of the Chinese economy, and second, to avoid escalating the great power rivalry with the United States.