africa's is even 'better' . More people doesnt mean better

Is a growing population better with the resource constraints that are arriving?

China's issue is that people who are too old to be productive still need to be fed, clothed, housed, doctored. An inverted population pyramid is not a good thing, no matter what the resource situation is.

ah yes, an exclusively china issue.

Well, they had a unique one-child policy for over three decades, and are only now starting to feel the ramifications.

In China, the children are expected to take care of their parents in their twilight years, and the husband is typically expected to provide for the wife and kid(s), so you basically have 1 dude providing for 8 people: himself + his wife + 2 kids + his parents + his wife's parents.

Any way you cut it, China is due for ~35 years of an absolutely horrendous labor participation rate. And unlike developed nations with declining birthrates, it's unlikely immigrants will be able to take up the slack, as extreme xenophobia is omnipresent in China and her population is absolutely massive.

To be fair to the post you're replying to China's demographic issues are more pronounced and likely to occur much sooner than most other large economies. The biggest issue being that they have never normalized immigration when they needed to like many western economies started to do in the 70s.

No, it's an issue in many countries. You will note, however, that this post regards China and India, and my comment was a comparison between the two. Pay attention.

The world's population's fertility is falling and will probably go bellow replacement soon.

That takes care of the resource problem.

So if one subset has a large fertility they eventually inherit the Earth since the neighboring countries will be empty, or will have changed their fertility course.

India has a fertility rate of 2.2 which is just at replacement level.

Its below replacement level now, according to the latest survey. That 2.2 number is from the 2015 survey.

It’s under replacement as of 2020, probably even lower now.

China has been below 2.2 in 1990 and has remained well below that since, while continuing to have a growing population. If you're looking even three or four decades ahead it's not a huge problem for India.

If you are looking for lots of prime-age workers to assemble stuff in a factory cheaply.....Yes?

Which is better in terms of the well-being of the population and all that is a separate question.

Humans and their minds are the greatest resource of all.

India’s birthdate is under replacement rate as of 2020. Doesn’t that mean the population is no longer growing?

Indian demographics is FAR worse than China's going forward. Her demographic divident is mostly done / wasted - the few affluent and educated states are aging out, massively overpopulated, under-educated and poor states are younger but have little prospects with atrocious labour particapation rate. That's a far bigger recipe for disaster than PRC who at ~5x per capita wealth and massive savings rate to manage demographic transition.

Reality is, India demographics is less blessing and more curse, she has to tackle a far larger overpopulation crisis with fewer resources and opportunities. Her economic growth / ability to generate new jobs has rarely kept up with population growth, and with automation, offshoring spreading out to smaller countries, there won't be same amount of manufacturing jobs to elevate India as it did PRC. India looks to be destined to get old while staying lower middle-income VS PRC who will at least enter high income. And once the old start dying in PRC , there will be huge amounts of generational wealth transfers that analysts predict will increase / sustain highend consumption. What Apple is really anticipating is being squeezed out due to geopolitics and rise in domestic PRC luxury brands.

That said, still India has 1.4B people and aggressive tariff policies to encourage local assembly / sales, but in terms of market power, there will be more high income PRC nationals vs Indians for Apple tax tier products, and that won't meaningfully converge unless India goes all in on income disparity.

Why are you referring to India using human pronouns ? He/her? You can just say “India”.

Until very recently non-humans were often referred to, in English, with gendered pronouns. This persists in English speaking countries and cultures other than US/UK.

Countries have, historically, been identified as women not just in the written word but also in illustration, poetry, etc. The OP's relationship to his country is entirely on his terms not yours.

Furthermore the role of pronouns are not to refer to people, but generally to refer to nouns. In some cultures it is considered rude to refer to a person as a pronoun. So OP shouldn't be using "India" repetitively (which would tire the reader/listener). One can use "it" to refer to "India", OP will prefers to refer to India as a "she"

Some may find this backwards, or misogynistic. That's their problem.

In languages with gendered nouns, countries, cars, boats, and houses are almost always female because they contain humans (and females have a womb).

English doesn't have gendered nouns, but this linguistic quirk runs deep enough in human psychology that we do sometimes use female pronouns to describe these things. Examples: "She's a beauty" (of a car), or "America and her allies."

That makes sense, except for the fact that in English, gendering inanimate objects is nearly always female. If you have a busted computer, you might say "I'm gonna resolder this pad and then she'll run just fine" but you'd almost never say "I'm gonna reseat this connector and then he'll boot up".

"because they contain humans (and females have a womb)."

While I like the theory, its cute, I dont know that that's true. L'automobile is male in Italian and Spanish. And its easy for a native speaker in either language to come up with numerous examples.

In fact gender really is just grammar. We shouldn't see much into it trying to project ourselves into it. Otherwise, why can the same object have different genders through synonyms? Again:

La macchina L'automobile.

La yerba (granted in Spanish its lost its meaning as grass) El cesped

La nave Il barco

La embarcación El bote

Or changes from the addition of a mere diminutive:

Il banco La bancarella

Il barco La barchetta

Gender is just a classification, largely binary (although Spanish retains the neuter) that got the unfortunate sexual labels of male and female

> L'automobile is male in Italian and Spanish.

What? LA automobile is female.

> Il barco La barchetta

"IL barco" doesn't mean anything, it's "LA barca" which, again, is female.

I'd say that generally speaking "it's female when they contain people" is correct, but of course not always (LO ufficio = the office).

This sounds interesting but I don't think it holds true?

Going by the languages I have some knowledge of, that doesn't hold true for Portuguese, where the word "country" itself is masculine but the truth is different countries have different genders. I guess it would be the same for other latin languages? (at least for Spanish). German is also the same but the word "country" is neutral.

I guess it does somewhat hold true for my native language, Hebrew, where all the words you specified but "house" are feminine. So I guess it might also hold true for Arabic then?

That is fascinating. It’s more or less like me trying to use the metric system.

Approximately 80% of the planet does not speak English at all. Be kind.

I speak multiple languages and I was asking a question, not trying to be unkind.

I asked the question because their English seemed so good to me that it seemed intentional, it also seemed unusual.

I think gendering a country is something that's done specifically if you're relatively native in English.

To me it's the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from my grandparents. It's weird and old-fashioned. Even most news sources use the genderless "it" for countries nowadays.

It's honestly a bit cringy to read.

Countries are occasionally associated with genders even in English (mother/father land etc). India is commonly referred to as her. Quick research into why:

>Bhārat Mātā ( Mother India in English) is a national personification of India (Bharat) as a mother goddess.

I don't know how valid, TBH I use pronouns because it's rhetorically tedious to keep typing country name.

You could use "it" as a non gendered pronoun.

But you don't have to. "it" is considered impolite, something you don't use for something you treasure. Furthermore English has a perfectly long history of referring to countries as shes. This has fallen in disuse in the past 50 years as we've gotten fussy about the sexes. But it is certainly not incorrect or foreign to English.

>"it" is considered impolite

Basically this. I generally try to use variant of 2/3 letter country code instead of pronounces to reduce repetition, but IN/IND sounds awkward.

> India's demographic outlook is far better than China's for the next two decades.

this is pretty much a polite way of saying indians are dying much younger while giving birth to more.

Not by much, the age expectancy is 70 vs 76

What use is a large population that is poorly educated and financially constrained?

China's forays on the world stage are because of money and its increasingly wealthy, educated population.

> What use is a large population that is poorly educated and financially constrained?

Sounds like China in the 1980s, when Apple first began manufacturing in China...

China's population in the 1980 was poor but was much better educated than most countries at the same GDP level. And a larger part of the population got basic education. This is important when you have to read instructions. (meanwhile India's literacy rate is at the level of a middle of pack African country)

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” :)

> China's forays on the world stage are because of money and its increasingly wealthy, educated population.

That's a very reductionist point of view which glosses over history.

>China's forays on the world stage are because of money and its increasingly wealthy, educated population.

Deng Xiaoping started Chinese economic reform. You might want to check out China before Deng. its a poorly educated and financially constrained country.

Do you need an educated labor force to assemble iPhone?

>Do you need an educated labor force to assemble iPhone?

Yes you do.

"Low-skill" workers with basic education (reading, writing, counting, some understanding of some scientific concepts) will simply perform better.

And you still need engineers and other high-skill workers to supervise, maintain, perform quality control, improve methods etc..

The thing is China (at least until quite recently) had a huge quantity of those and at a rather low price.