The one child policy only really mattered in the cities, rural China had different rules. There is also no incentive for China to lie, quite the opposite, underreporting their population would be a boon for their success on the global stage: imagine if they are achieving what they achieve, with half as many people?

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empressplay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, except that China also uses its population as a military threat. It going down would take away some of the impact of that. So it always needs to go up, to reinforce it.

	▲	pixl97 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Mostly in the past before they were well industrialized. When you had India with over a billion people as a threat, it was a good measure. Now most of the surrounding countries have fallen below population replacement rate excess population can cause issues with economic growth in places resources and space are constrained.