The figures for students graduating primary school (18.57 million) and entering junior high school (18.49 million) match up quite well, though. Do you think primary schools and junior high schools manage to coordinate massive student number inflation to the tune of 3 million non-existent students, but then at the transition to senior high schools that suddenly breaks down? If anything, I'd expect it to break down when those non-existent students are supposed to take the Zhongkao exam in order to graduate, not at the senior high school admissions stage.

Some statistics reported in China are unreliable because the person doing the reporting also has their performance evaluated by the numbers they report and there are few external checks on validity, but I don't think that's the case for student numbers in particular.

Also, it seems like you're the same 'jldugger who cited Chinese population statistics upthread, but when somebody else does it, they're suddenly unreliable???

> If anything, I'd expect it to break down when those non-existent students are supposed to take the Zhongkao exam in order to graduate, not at the senior high school admissions stage.

Reasonable. If I were more conspiratorial, I might suggest that it's precisely because people are watching college exam numbers that 9th grade -> high school is where the break is. Or could just be the result of compounding growth from two competing officials making different exaggerated claims decades ago.

But really, the high school enrollment gap is not super germane to my main point: we may have seen peak China population, stemming largely from a smaller incoming cohort. The sidebar about offsetting that decline with increased enrollment percentages is interesting, I'm just default skeptical.

> cited Chinese population statistics upthread, but when somebody else does it, they're suddenly unreliable???

My cite appears to use UN data, not the PRC's official stats (at least not directly). But I'm pretty sure the official stats are also showing the same trend, just at a slower rate of decline. I mean, it's the entire reason for loosening the one-child policy to two, then to three.