(a).
On March 1, 2023, in order to emphasize the view that India is stronger than China, some Indian elites openly stated in the EurAsia Times magazine that when it comes to the current gap between China and India, China is obviously worse than India in four aspects.
What are the four aspects of what are they talking about?
First, population advantage.
As the newly established "world's most populous country", India's self-confidence in terms of population is obvious to all.
Indians are convinced that China's rise has a lot to do with cheap and abundant labor.
And they can also rely on their advantages in the demographic dividend to achieve the goal of crushing China in all aspects.
As these Indian elites say, according to the relationship between the demographic structure and the country's economy, relying on these increasing labor force, India is indeed expected to attract more foreign investment to a certain extent, so that the country's economy, especially the manufacturing economy, can achieve stable growth.
For example, Modi** implemented a series of economic reforms for India, so that India's GDP successfully surpassed its own suzerain, the United Kingdom, in the last three months of 2021 to become the world's fifth largest economy, which is the best example.
According to IMF data, in the first half of 2022, relying on the healthy development of the manufacturing industry, India surpassed the United Kingdom with more than $850 billion in the first quarter alone.
It can also be seen from this that Modi's focus on economic reform on the manufacturing industry is a very correct choice.
In addition to bringing a lot of positive effects to India economically, Zhai Zhenwu, president of the Chinese Population Society, also said at the "Belt and Road" Population and Development Seminar and Book Launch Conference held in Beijing earlier
Compared with Chinese, who speak Chinese as their mother tongue, Indians have a very natural advantage in international cooperation, that is, language advantage.
Although it is said that the more people are born, the more people can be educated.
However, as India is a country where English is the official language, those Indians who cannot afford to go to school can still naturally learn basic English listening and speaking in this natural English environment.
This advantage in English communication can also allow Indians to play a good and positive role when doing business with foreign businessmen.
However, Zhai later added that even if India's total population exceeds that of China, it does not necessarily have more economic development potential than China.
Indians will be troubled by their growing population, at least for a long time to come.
The first aspect of the problem, the so-called population burden, is that India's demographic structure is underrepresented by the disproportionately small proportion of the effective labor force.
By analyzing and comparing a large amount of data on the world's population and national development, Zhai Zhenwu has come to an extremely important conclusion.
That is, if a country wants to achieve long-term and stable economic development, it must be inseparable from three elements.
That is, a steady stream of capital, labor, and technology.
Regarding the part of the labor force, Zhai Zhenwu deliberately emphasized that it does not mean that the larger the population base of a country, the more labor force it has. The premise of whether the number of labor force can bring positive impetus to the national economy is whether these groups that act as labor force can provide effective labor to the market.
The so-called effectiveness is of course not that the larger the scale of labor, the better.
To take the simplest example, India is the manufacturing industry that India is most proud of.
If these skilled young people are on the production line, they can continue to output more value to the enterprise and bring more profits. Then such a labor force is a truly effective labor force.
However, it may disappoint Indians to combine the current labor force participation rate of only 76% for men and 24% for women.
Converted into specific figures, India has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, but less than 400 million Indians are involved in labor production.
Even if Indians with such a labor structure stabilize the employment rate in India, it will be a problem.
Not to mention China, which wants to surpass the total labor force participation rate of 75% in terms of the labor dividend of the population.
In addition to the lack of an effective labor force, the education rate in India is also an important factor influencing India's conversion of population into the labor force.
Can you imagine a country that is about to become the world's most populous, with only 9% of its young population having attended university?
According to statistics, only 12 per cent of all working-age workers in India have higher education, compared with 27 per cent below primary school.
You must know that since the implementation of nine-year compulsory education in 2006, the term illiteracy has become extremely unfamiliar in Chinese society.
However, under the strategic slogan of rejuvenating the country through science and education and strengthening the country with talents, the current population in China with an education level below primary school is only 15%。
Compared with India's 12% tertiary education level, the proportion of Chinese in higher education is 22%, almost twice that of India.
Some people may ask, is it because India's education level is so low, is it because they don't like to learn by nature?
The answer, of course, is no.
In fact, it is not that Indians are unwilling to learn, but in today's society where educational resources are scarce, class hierarchies are strict, and the gap between the rich and the poor is huge, how can the people at the bottom of India, who are difficult to break free from even the basic food and clothing line, have the energy, qualifications, and capital to compete with the Indian elite for so-called educational resources?
Compared with China**, which is still struggling with poverty alleviation in the last century, but still does not forget the task of eradicating illiteracy, the so-called Indian population in the mouths of these Indian elites is an advantage that China is far from being able to inferior, which is simply like a fantasy joke.
Therefore, about this advantage has been ruled out!