India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country in the world by mid-2023, according to United Nations estimates.

The population of India is projected to reach 1.4286 billion compared to 1.4257 billion in China, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund on the state of the world's population.

The "World Population Prospects" report issued by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, published last July, showed that India will surpass China as the most populous country in the world by 2023.

Decline in China's population

For the first time in more than six decades, China's population declined last year according to official data published in January, at a time when a demographic crisis threatens the world's most populous country.

The country, with a population of 1.4 billion, suffers from a decline in birth rates to record lows alongside an aging workforce, a rapid decline that analysts warned may hinder economic growth and increase pressures on the strained public treasury.

China's population reached about 1,411,750,000 by the end of 2022, according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics, a decrease of 850,000 compared to the previous year.

The country recorded about 9.56 million births and 10.41 million deaths during 2022, according to the statistics bureau.

It is noteworthy that the last time a population decline was recorded in China was in the early 1960s, when the country faced the worst famine in its modern history due to Mao Zedong's disastrous agricultural policy known as the "Great Leap Forward".