We've quality: China on India becoming most populous nation

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.

Asked for his reaction to the UN report on population, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: "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 United States. "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.