China fact (?) of the day

A University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer, Yi Fuxian, contends that China's official population figure of 1.4 billion may be significantly lower than reality. Fuxian claims the true population could be as high as 1.27 billion, a discrepancy equivalent to the entire population of Mexico. This overestimation by the Chinese government has impacted strategic decision-making in both China and the United States, fostering overconfidence in Beijing and anxiety in Washington.

Fuxian bases his findings on discrepancies in health and education records. Each newborn in China is mandated to receive a BCG tuberculosis vaccine within 24 hours of birth. However, multi-dose vials used for this vaccination can only typically administer 1.2 to 1.6 doses before expiration. Official government reports stated over 14 million births annually between 2018 and 2020, yet the government approved roughly 5.8 million vials per year.

This suggests each vial would vaccinate 2.4 babies, which Fuxian believes medically and practically impossible on a nationwide scale.

Another red flag is the differing birth cohort sizes reported. For instance, the National Bureau of Statistics claimed 17.7 million babies were born in 2000. Yet, when that cohort reached age 10 in the 2010 census, only around 14.4 million were counted. By the time they graduated middle school in 2015, this number had dropped to approximately 14.2 million. This discrepancy accounts for about 3.5 million people from that year who are unaccounted for.

Fuxian cross-references census records with school enrollments, hospital births, vaccine batches, and household registrations to corroborate his analysis. He concludes that the data shows a consistent pattern of inflation across multiple data sources in China.