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China economy
OpinionComment
Yi Fuxian
Yi Fuxian

China’s population numbers are almost certainly inflated to hide the harmful legacy of its family planning policy

  • China has inflated its population data so much that its status as the world’s most populous country may be false
  • This happens so provinces can get education subsidies and Beijing can hide the results of decades of family planning

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Children in Xianghe county, Hebei province, learn the traditional art of paper-cutting during their summer vacation. The over-reporting of student in enrolment in Chinese schools points to a bigger problem with obtaining an accurate population count. Photo: Xinhua
Yi Fuxian
China’s official demographic figures, including the now-cliched “country of 1.4 billion people”, seriously misrepresent the country’s real population landscape. The real size of China’s population could be 115 million fewer than the official number, putting China behind India in terms of population.
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This massive error, equal to the combined populations of the United Kingdom and Spain, is a product of China’s rigged population statistics system, influenced by the vested interests of China’s family planning authority.

To start with, the raw data of China’s population figures were “adjusted”. China’s total fertility rate, or the number of kids per woman throughout her life, dropped below the watershed level of 2.1 in 1991, from which moment the population size of the next generation would be smaller than the current one, and the average total fertility rate was 1.36 in 1994-2018, according to data from census and surveys. However, the family planning authority in charge of the country’s population control refused to believe the numbers and “adjusted” the rate to 1.6-1.8 and, accordingly, the official population size.

For instance, the real total fertility rate in 2000 was 1.22, according to a census result, but the government revised it to 1.8. Accordingly, the country had 14.1 million new births in 2000, but the government revised the figure by 26 per cent to 17.7 million. A census, which is conducted every 10 years, should provide the truest picture of China’s demographic situation. But for the 2000 census, the government was unhappy about the original finding of 1.24 billion and revised it up to 1.27 billion.

One incentive to inflate population size is that China’s family planning authority needs to present a picture of a “rapidly growing population” to justify the country’s brutal family control policies and even the very existence of the birth control apparatus.
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The basis for these adjustments, according to the Chinese government, is the size of primary school enrolment. For the official statisticians, the primary school enrolment data should be reliable because public education covers every Chinese child. They were wrong, however, because primary school enrolment data in China is often inflated so that local authorities can claim more education subsidies from Beijing.

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