It's somewhat common knowledge that China's population count has been inflated for some time now, perhaps by 100's of millions. Not hard to believe when you realize how much data out of China is very difficult to verify (like GDP for instance). Evidence typically cited to support this are discrepancies in birth data, reports of 350 million duplicate IDs and fertility rates likely lower than official estimates. It's also reasonable to conclude there are systemic incentives for local officials to exaggerate numbers.

There is a strange pro-China faction on HN that will downvote me for this comment (not that this comment is at all anti-China) However you can ask any honest economist, etc and they will betray at least some suspicion themselves.

"Credible" critics (as in least noncredible) i.e. YiFuxian undercount in <10% range, which comports with bureaucratic incentive to overcount before digitization when head count hard to track.

>perhaps by 100's of millions

More than 10%, i.e. PRC actually only 800m-1000m (20-30% undercount) is when claims become statistically retarded. There's proxy indicators like PRC ag imports, especially animal feed (soybeans), if they were 100s of millions short then per capita caloric consumption reach biologically impossible levels (like 200 grams of protein / 5000 calories per capita) meanwhile key policy CCP (Xi personally) hammers is food security / wastage. This when demographic skepticism becomes unhinged.

TBH PRC over reporting pop, UNDER reporting GDP is sensible. PRC entire history has been trying to underreport GDP (specifically per capita gdp) using accounting methods to stay under high income status for development perks, literally since initial IMF negotiations to set PRC per capita baseline, PRC insisted on something like 50% lower than what IMF calculated. Of course the anti PRC faction won't accept the logical out come is that PRC that is much richer it claims, with less people than it claims, i.e. PRC per capita much higher than it claims only makes PRC system look stronger. Then factor in demographic income disparity (i.e. tertiary educated newer gen make multiples more) and realize as PRC demo phases out undereducated/unproductive elders in next few generations and PRC per capita is statistically locked into doubling/tripling. Then factor in PPP / potential future FX moves, i.e. PRC appreciating rmb is another multiplier on PRC per capita. Not many "honest" economist talks about how PRC is actually incentivized to look statistically weak (somehow people forgot about hide/bide when it comes to economy), because muh authoritarians like to look strong, leading to plenty of PRC doomer economists who keep being wrong.

This particular topic is covered in the "Are there billions of fake people?" section of the linked article.

This is the most ridiculous take. If I were pro/anti-US, It would be understood as an opinion on the domestic/foreign policy of current or past US administrations.

If I were pro-China, that would by this standard, mean that I refuse to believe unsubstantiated rumors and or didn't qualify every undeniably real Chinese achievement with either skepticism or 'at what cost'.

> There is a strange pro-China faction on HN

There's an even stranger anti-China faction on HN.

> However you can ask any honest economist, etc and they will betray at least some suspicion themselves.

Those same "honest" "economists" have been saying china was lying the other way. Did you know that people like you were saying "the ccp" was intentionally UNDERCOUNTING their population not so long ago? That china couldn't be trusted and china's real population was near 2 billion.

Strange people like you say shit like china is buying up all our real estate and then turn around and say china's economy is a fraud and they are about to go bankrupt? China's military is about to expand around the world and then say china's corrupt and they are a paper tiger?

Sometimes strange people like you contradict yourselves within the same thread. Strange.