A social media post claims that on 04 March 2022, India has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world. Also, the post claims India’s population is 1,415,653,821. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: On 04 March 2022, India has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world.
Fact: There are no official reports from the Indian/ Chinese governments in this regard. No international agency of repute has claimed that Indian population has surpassed the Chinese. The viral claim started off from a news piece by I-Media, a media outlet based in Taiwan. However, the news report did not provide any authentic source of the Indian population. Hence the claim made in the post is MISEADING.
According to a news report published by popular Chinese media network CGTN, I-Media, a news outlet in the Taiwan region, published an article stating that as of 04 March 2022, India has surpassed China and became the most populous country, with its population reaching 1,415,653,821. Most likely, this news report could be the source for the viral post. However, the CGTN article ruled out the claim of I-Media, as their source for the Indian population is not authentic and there are no recent official reports either from India or China in this regard.
Usually, India conducts the Census survey once every ten years. The last census report released in 2011 puts India’s population count at 1,210,193,422. In wake of the pandemic, the latest census survey ought to be conducted in 2021, got delayed to the first half of 2022.
Therefore, there is no official data from the Indian government as far as the current population figure is concerned. If indeed any such survey states that the Indian population has surpassed the Chinese, media would have reported it, however, we could not find any such reports.
Earlier in 2021, the United Nations Population Division estimated the real-time population count of India as 1.4 billion. Whereas in 2020, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Bank estimated India’s population as 1.38 billion.
Few real-time population tracking websites using data from the UN population division projected the current Indian population at around 1.403 billion. As per the latest government data, the total population of mainland China stood at 1.4126 billion by the end of 2021. This shows that currently, the total population of India is still less than China.
The United Nations had earlier predicted that India would overtake China as the most populous country by 2027. In fact, experts predicted India would surpass China even earlier than predicted by the UN. However, there are no recent studies or reports from governments or international organizations of repute claiming Indian population surpassed the Chinese.
To sum it up, there are no reports stating that the Indian population surpassed the Chinese.
