When Will India Outpopulate China?

Over the past few years we have heard of various records broken by China; of peaks it has climbed, overtaking other countries. But there is one crucial variable in which China, long unsurpassed and far ahead of any contender, may soon lose the top spot: Total population. India, the world’s second most populous country at present, is closing in. To be sure, I don’t consider it as a glorious contest with the winner being more lucky and deserving of praise. India’s demographic growth poises both opportunities and immense challenges, but this complex issue is a different story altogether. Here I am interested only in the numbers: Has India already overtaken China demographically and if not, when will it happen?

We do not know the exact numbers and we will not know them until at least 2021. In India, following a tradition established by the colonial authorities, a census is held every 10 years. The last census was held in 2010-2011 and it reported the total population of the country as 1,210,193,422. Similarly, the Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China in 2010 established the population of the state to be 1,339,724,852. It has been quite a chase between the two. As of the 2001 census, the population of India was 1.072 billion and China’s was 1.245 billion as of its 2000 census, a difference of 173 million people. Nine years ago this gap had narrowed to around 129 million. 

Although nearly a decade old, this is the most reliable, official data we have at present. In more recent years, we have estimates of demographic growth built on the 2010-2011 numbers. These are like darts thrown at a wall – they may be quite accurate but may potentially be a bit off the mark. The estimates published by the World Bank, for instance, assume that in 2017 the population of China was 1.386 billion, while that of India was 1.339 billion. This would mean that in 2017 India reached the position occupied by China in 2009-2010 and that China was “only” 47 million inhabitants ahead, a huge jump since the 129 million difference of 2011. The estimate of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics at the time of writing (April 2019) put the country’s population at 1.396 billion. This could very well mean that the catching up point is just ahead of us, but a difference of over 40 million people is still a formidable number. Even these “guesstimates” suggest that India has not overtaken China demographically yet and that it will need a couple of years to do so.

The problem with projections and extrapolations is that the gap is likely to be narrowing more quickly each year. China’s demographic growth is slowing down quicker than that of India. In 2017-2018, China’s population growth rate was 0.38 percent. The annual growth of India was 1.19 percent in 2016 and 1.1 percent in 2017. One needs to add that the issue of citizens unaccounted for in the censuses is actually significant in both countries and may unpredictably deform the data. 

Moreover, with a decade-long gap in official numbers it will be hard to pinpoint the exact moment of overtaking. The data from China’s seventh population survey should be out in 2020. The next census is to be held in India next year (2020), meaning that the first, provisional sets of data, including total population numbers, should be available in 2021. This means that it is only in 2021 that we will know for sure whether China has retained the top spot with the world’s largest population. The growth projections suggest that by 2021, China will still be somewhat ahead. It is therefore quite plausible that the official confirmation of China losing the number one position won’t come until 2031, the next phase of censuses. In other words, India may dethrone China sometime between 2021 and 2031, but we will not know exactly when it happens.