Still have over 900 mn ‘quality’ workforce: China

BEIJING: China on Wednesday sought to downplay India overtaking it as the world’s most populous nation with 142.86 crore people, saying that it still has a “quality” workforce of close to 900 million people to provide a strong impetus for development.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing here: “I want to tell you that population dividend does not depend on quantity but also quality”.

The population is important and so is the talent, he said about China, the world’s second-largest economy after the US. “China’s population is over 1.4 billion. Those in the working age is close to 900 million and that group of populations is 10.5 years of education on average,” he said. Wang also said China has taken active measures to deal with the ageing population.