Embarrassed publishers of The State of China Atlas have had to reprint 11,000 copies of the book sent around the world after a misprint on the back cover put the population of China at 1.3 million instead of 1.3 billion.
The misprint - giving China a population one third the size of New Zealand's - was missed by editors at Myriad Editions in Britain and by editors in the United States and Australia before thousands of copies were shipped out.
When the mistake was noticed, the book was recalled and Myriad paid for a new print run.
'It is one of those things that just slipped through,' said Sadie Mayne, one of the book's British-based editors. 'It happens very, very rarely. We're all human and we all make mistakes. Fortunately it was spotted before the book went out to the shops and we acted very quickly to recall the book and amend it.'
John Elliot, publishing manager for the University of New South Wales Press in Sydney which is distributing the book across Asia, said: 'The back cover was seen by a number of people in three continents at final page-proof stage. Unfortunately the typo [typographical error] was only noticed after the book had been printed.
'Unfortunately the typo was so significant that the entire print run has been recalled. The end result is that we should now receive our bulk copies of the book some three to four weeks later than we originally expected.'