HONG KONG -China's state-run television station CCTV claimed on Thursday that Western media stories on China's population being surpassed by India purposefully disregard China's development while exploiting the subject to "bad mouth" it and promote decoupling.

In a sternly worded commentary, CCTV claimed that Western media had implied in recent years that China's development was in "big trouble" and that when the demographic dividend of China vanished, it would drop and the world economy would also suffer.

"They slandered all the way, and China has developed all the way, producing a miracle of sustainable, stable economic growth with a huge population,"

According to data issued by the UN on Wednesday, India will have roughly 3 million more people than its neighbor China by the middle of this year, making it the world's most populated country.

"The United States is stepping up efforts to contain China's development and advocate further decoupling and found new hype points from the United Nations report," CCTV claimed, adding that the West merely linked population size with development accomplishments.

Such hype demonstrates an ignorance of the fundamentals of the law of population development. The drop in the willingness to have children and the decline in the birth rate are common issues encountered by all of humanity today, according to CCTV, which added that Western industrialized nations generally experienced issues like a labor shortage.

China's population dropped last year for the first time in six decades, a historic development that is predicted to start a protracted phase of population decline with significant effects for the country's economy and the rest of the world.

According to Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, population benefits depend not just on quantity but also on quality.

China has made aggressive measures to address population aging, Wang told reporters on Wednesday. "Population is important, but talents are also important," Wang added.