We’ve previously covered that China’s demographics are in severe decline and that China’s GDP may be overstated by 60%. Now a researcher says that China’s population could be overstated by 37-50%.
(Before we dig in, two caveats: First, the channel is Lei’s Real Talk, from someone who came over from communist China and was a stu7dnet in the U.S. when the Tiananmen Square, but she doesn’t use her full name, which she says is to protect her family back in China. Second, she’s using AI to answer some of her questions. Still, the math-based questions don’t seem conducive to the “AI hallucinations” we see elsewhere, but some caveat lictor seems in order.)
“We know China is facing a series of economic challenges. Weak consumer, confidence falling real estate prices, high debt, industrial overcapacity, sluggish exports, and so on and so forth. But the underlying issue of the faltering economy, in my opinion, is a severe population crisis.”
“China’s actual population is far below than the official figure of 1.4 billion.”
“I want to compare China and India’s population between the 30-year period from 1990 to 2020. Let’s also compare their average fertility rate between the two countries and their medium age.” If you run those very basic numbers, things don’t add up.
“In 1990, China’s population is over India is by about 270 million [1.14 billion vs. 870 million], and 30 years later China’s population is still over India by 30 million [1.41 billion vs. 1.38 billion].”
“However, if you look at the fertility rate, India’s average fertility rate [2.97%] during the 30 years years is so much higher than China’s [1.70].” All these are the official published rates.
“With that kind of fertility rate in India consistently over 30 years, India’s population should be larger than China’s. Mathematically it’s impossible that China’s population is still greater than India’s.”
I’m skipping over a detailed breakdown of the two country’s respective fertility rates by decades.
“I asked GPT to apply the fertility rates for each country and give me the total population in 2020 for India and China respectively, and this is the results it generate. In 2020 population, India’s population was 1.38 billion, China’s was only 890 million.” India’s number is off the official figure by 4%. China’s number is off by 37%, or 520 million people. And this is at a time when life expectancy for China has been increasing.
Analysis of various other population factor considerations snipped.
“I asked AI to recalculate everything by replacing the official fertility of 1.7 and 1.5 from the year to 2000 to 2010 replaced them with Dr. Yi Fuxian [University of Wisconsin Madison demographic researcher whose work we previously mentioned here] fertility assessment of 1.1. It came up with a shocking total population of 695 million, and that’s less than half of the announced population of 1.4 billion.”
We didn’t see a huge drop in economic output because China’s economy is investment driven.
“Population loss took place over 30 years, and particularly started since 2000, and this reduction in population didn’t show up as reduction in consumer spending until this generation reached the age of 18, or even older, when they started to spend money. So now we start to see the impact on consumer spending because there’s a time lag.
Plus Flu Manchu deaths.
“China suddenly saw a wave of kindergarten closures, so in some cases private kindergartens have been shrunk by 20% in some regions.”
“So for all these factors combined, I think China’s real population may be between 600 million and to 800 million.”
Given the GDP overstatement estimates, this enormous overstatement of China’s population seems plausible. It also makes all those wild claims of “China will soon overtake the US economically” look even more ridiculous.
China’s “one child per couple” policy will be seen by future generations as one of the greatest self-inflicted catastrophes in history.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 28th, 2024 at 11:30 AM and is filed under Communism, Economics, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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3 Responses to “China’s Population Only 600 to 800 million?”
Wikipedia gives the populations of 182 cities in 2020.. Totaling those up gives 495M. Statista.com gives the urbanization of China as 61.43%. This gives a total population of 806M.
If we work backwards: assume the initial population of 1.4B and the same urbanization fraction, we get an urban population of 860M. assuming an average “town” size of 50K, this means there would have to be ANOTHER 7,300 towns, with 539M people not living in any of those 7300 towns.
doing the same comparison w/the US gives
US cities : 98M (given) -> 82.66% -> 118.5M
US Pop: 274M <- 82.66% <- 331M (given)
whjch gives 3520 "towns" w/an average of 50K.and 57M not living in even those towns.
I'm not sure if this bolsters or undercuts her figures. But it's another look at the populations independent of her methodology.
Small correction should be 540M for Chinese not living in the towns
Numbers for China in same format as the US
Chinese cities: 495M (given) -> 61.43% -> 806M
Chines Pop: 860M <- 61.43% <- 1.4B (given)
which gives 7300 "towns" w/an average of 50K and 540M not living his those towns
The Chinese decided to continue the one-child practice even after the government abandoned it. Once they got a taste of the good life, they didn’t want to lose it by being burdened with additional kids.
Also, this analysis doesn’t mention the “bare branches” problem of millions of excess men as a result of the murder of millions of their baby sisters during the one-child policy period and Chinese traditional cultural preference for male children. When you kill off baby girls, who’s going to produce babies twenty years later?
The restrictions and oppressiveness of China’s “social credit” and surveillance society have their impact as well. If you make people’s lives miserable enough, they won’t want to bring children into that world. China’s current aggressiveness and posturing is due to their cratering population of military-age men. If they don’t make their moves soon, they won’t have the bodies to make threats in the future.
Wikipedia gives the populations of 182 cities in 2020.. Totaling those up gives 495M. Statista.com gives the urbanization of China as 61.43%. This gives a total population of 806M.
If we work backwards: assume the initial population of 1.4B and the same urbanization fraction, we get an urban population of 860M. assuming an average “town” size of 50K, this means there would have to be ANOTHER 7,300 towns, with 539M people not living in any of those 7300 towns.
doing the same comparison w/the US gives
US cities : 98M (given) -> 82.66% -> 118.5M
US Pop: 274M <- 82.66% <- 331M (given)
whjch gives 3520 "towns" w/an average of 50K.and 57M not living in even those towns.
I'm not sure if this bolsters or undercuts her figures. But it's another look at the populations independent of her methodology.
Small correction should be 540M for Chinese not living in the towns
Numbers for China in same format as the US
Chinese cities: 495M (given) -> 61.43% -> 806M
Chines Pop: 860M <- 61.43% <- 1.4B (given)
which gives 7300 "towns" w/an average of 50K and 540M not living his those towns
The Chinese decided to continue the one-child practice even after the government abandoned it. Once they got a taste of the good life, they didn’t want to lose it by being burdened with additional kids.
Also, this analysis doesn’t mention the “bare branches” problem of millions of excess men as a result of the murder of millions of their baby sisters during the one-child policy period and Chinese traditional cultural preference for male children. When you kill off baby girls, who’s going to produce babies twenty years later?
The restrictions and oppressiveness of China’s “social credit” and surveillance society have their impact as well. If you make people’s lives miserable enough, they won’t want to bring children into that world. China’s current aggressiveness and posturing is due to their cratering population of military-age men. If they don’t make their moves soon, they won’t have the bodies to make threats in the future.