China’s real population total 100 million fewer than official mark, family planning critic says
Calculations by US-based researcher put China second to India in number of people
A US-based long-standing Chinese critic of China’s family planning policies says Beijing has inflated the country’s official population total by as much as 100 million people and should abandon limits on births as soon as possible.
In two unpublished research papers, Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist with the department obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school, said China’s actual population at the end of last year should have been about 1.28 billion, and not the 1.38 billion calculated by the National Bureau of Statistics.
By Yi’s estimates, China is already the world’s second-most populous country after India. But according to the United Nations’ 2017 “World Population Prospects” report, India will not overtake China in population until 2024.
The 100 million gap is an upward revision of the 90-million difference Yi suggested at an academic symposium in Beijing in May, causing a stir.
He said he changed the number to take account of Chinese migration to other countries.