China’s Chongqing halts release of monthly birth data due to ‘unfair’ foreign media coverage

“Unfair” foreign media coverage has been blamed for one of the only local governments in China that released monthly data on new births halting the practice.

The Chinese provincial level municipality of Chongqing, an economic powerhouse in southwestern China which is home to some 30 million residents, suspended the release of the data earlier this year.

Official national birth figures are only published annually at the beginning of each year, meaning Chongqing was one of only a handful of local governments to provide an early indicator of population change and the effect of government policies.

But Chongqing’s data had come under heavy criticism after a sudden spike in new births in June last year, when the municipality reported that 66,862 children had been born.

This figure was close to the total number of births from the previous five months combined, leading population experts to suspect that local officials were manipulating the data to satisfy an official target.

“The monthly new birth figure was supposed to improve data transparency,” said a member of staff from the Chongqing Municipal Health Commission in response to a query sent by the South China Morning Post. “But it received unfair coverage from many foreign media.”

The member of staff also claimed the irregularity in the data from June 2019 was due to a technical error caused by a delay in entering the data into the city’s computer system because staff were working on other projects, including the government’s poverty alleviation campaign.

Chinese law prohibits the local government from simply publishing the number of new birth certificates issued by hospitals, the member of staff added.