I honestly don't believe China's population size. Why would they have completely empty cities, fields of cars and bikes no one wants to drive? It would benefit every regional governor and Beijing as a whole to have people believe there were a Trillion people there, all ready to buy your movie and arm up for war. a few extra thousand slipped into census that nobody is stupid enough to go door to door to triple check where it was mailed from.
Last year I read the book Poorly Made in China. At one point the author touches on this - he says that every time there's a census, the local authorities running it think "well, there's probably some people that we didn't catch, so let's add X percent to the total". Then those data sets get higher up, and these people think "well, there probably are some people those guys didn't catch, so let's add X percent to the total". That happens on a couple subsequent levels and in the end the population is overestimated by a large degree but noone has a way to know how much exactly.
I honestly don't believe China's population size. Why would they have completely empty cities, fields of cars and bikes no one wants to drive? It would benefit every regional governor and Beijing as a whole to have people believe there were a Trillion people there, all ready to buy your movie and arm up for war. a few extra thousand slipped into census that nobody is stupid enough to go door to door to triple check where it was mailed from.
Last year I read the book Poorly Made in China. At one point the author touches on this - he says that every time there's a census, the local authorities running it think "well, there's probably some people that we didn't catch, so let's add X percent to the total". Then those data sets get higher up, and these people think "well, there probably are some people those guys didn't catch, so let's add X percent to the total". That happens on a couple subsequent levels and in the end the population is overestimated by a large degree but noone has a way to know how much exactly.