Wait, so it’s a bad thing that they have more people? How does it make them any less powerful?
PPP is metric, good for comparing certain things. I wouldn’t think that, for the purposes of determining which is the greater power, less population would be more beneficial as long as the total economic output is greater.
I don’t think total ‘power’ is a useful metric for comparing countries leadership. An incompetent farmer with 10x the land will likely grow more food than a competent one. That says little about who you should seek advice from.
In this analogy growing food like GDP is the easy part. A successful harvest aka what people actually care about is harder.
I don't want to sound like I am dumping on China. The US/etc housing boom was a boost to GDP largely due to low interest rates, but because the assets where poorly allocated the long term value creation was well below what the economic activity suggested. Building something is a critical first step, building something useful that's worth the maintenance and replacement costs is vastly more difficult.
PPP is metric, good for comparing certain things. I wouldn’t think that, for the purposes of determining which is the greater power, less population would be more beneficial as long as the total economic output is greater.