Last week, the UN’s global population project announced a major shift in the way the world looks. Next year, India, not China, will be the world’s most populous country. Right now, China has 1.43 billion people to India’s 1.41 billion, but by mid-century there will be more than 1.6 billion Indians to around 1.3 billion Chinese.

At one level, this development ought to delight Beijing, which compelled its population into a “one child” policy for some 40 years. Yet there may be a few disconsolate faces in Beijing. The idea of China being the most populous society in the world has long been linked to the country’s rise. Officially, China dismisses any idea that being at the top of global rankings matters: in January this year, vice foreign minister Le Yucheng declared that China had no interest in becoming the world’s biggest economy or superpower and would instead work on improving its people’s lives at home.

Yet for years, Chinese social media has overflowed with confrontational voices demanding that the country should be “No 1”. The drop to No 2 in global population is likely to bring soul-searching about that quest for the other global top spot.

Despite those denials from its leaders, there’s no doubt that China is aiming to become the world’s largest economy, and by some measures such as purchasing power parity, it already is. In terms of nominal GDP, it’s still No 2 to the US, but many economists suggest that it’s likely to reach the top by the late 2020s (although unexpected factors such as the economic effects of Covid quarantines could get in the way).

The quest to grow GDP is part of a wider project to head the rankings in a range of areas. During the 1980s and 90s, Chinese policymakers responded to challenges from the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, to construct a model that tracked a concept they termed “comprehensive national power” (zonghe guoli). Much of the assessment started within the military, with assessments of weaponry and training, but attention quickly turned to economic factors. Deng’s analysts ranked its existing resources such as its labour force and material and mineral resources, as well as projecting future capacity in areas such as new technologies.

During the 1990s, scholars debated how far China had risen in the global rankings. However, in the 00s ambitions shifted: instead of “comprehensive national power”, Chinese analysts started to talk in terms of increasing China’s “soft power” – the capacity that states have to lead other states through persuasion rather than coercion.

For much of the period since 1945, the US has been the undisputed No 1 in this area. Despite the many geopolitical disasters (Vietnam, Iraq) and domestic injustices (the politics of race), the capacity of the US to project an idea of itself around the world has been – and remains – immensely strong. There is a reason that Xi Jinping was just one of the many Chinese parents who sent his daughter to study in the US.