A U.S.-based researcher has argued that China's actual population may be about 1.27 billion, roughly 130 million fewer than official statistics show. If the estimate holds, the country's labor force and consumer market would be smaller than currently projected. Analysts say it could also complicate Beijing's long-term goal of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy.
The Wall Street Journal reported on recent research by Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has long criticized China's one-child policy. Yi cross-checked birth registrations, school enrollment figures and vaccination records, and concluded that China's official population may be inflated by about 9% — a gap comparable to the population of Mexico. He attributes the discrepancy to local governments padding figures to secure more fiscal support from the central government.
Yi's central piece of evidence is tuberculosis (BCG) vaccination records. Newborns in China are required to receive the vaccine within 24 hours of birth. Because multi-dose vials must be discarded 30 minutes after opening, each vial is used for an average of only 1.2 to 1.6 infants, according to his analysis. The government approved 5.8 million vials a year between 2018 and 2020. Official births over the same period averaged about 14 million a year, which would require each vial to cover 2.4 infants.
Figures by birth year also fail to line up. The National Bureau of Statistics reported 17.7 million births in 2000. When that cohort turned 10, the 2010 census counted 14.4 million, and middle-school graduates in 2015 numbered 14.2 million. That implies a decline of 3.3 million to 3.5 million within the same age group.
Yi said some schools had inflated enrollment by 20% to 50%, and that expanded insurance support tied to childbirth has given hospitals an incentive to overstate the number of births. Whether such discrepancies add up to an overcount of China's total population, however, requires separate verification. The research was published in an independent Chinese-language academic journal based in New York, where Yi serves as deputy editor.
There are counterarguments. Wang Feng, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said in a July 2024 interview with Newsweek that there had been at least three censuses since 2000 and no evidence of an overcount exceeding 100 million. The United Nations Population Division said in the same interview that it does not take Chinese statistics at face value and cross-references multiple sources. The National Bureau of Statistics, shortly after releasing the 2021 census results, said differences between birth figures and age-specific population counts stem from the two data sets coming from different sources.
The bureau counted 1,411.78 million people in the 2020 census. Total population stood at 1,404.89 million at the end of 2025, down 3.39 million from a year earlier and marking a fourth consecutive annual decline. Births last year fell 17% to 7.92 million, while deaths numbered 11.31 million.
The population structure is a variable in Beijing's plan to expand domestic demand. The total fertility rate, which the government does not publish regularly, is estimated by private researchers at 0.96 to 0.98, while the United Nations puts it at 1.02. Household consumption accounted for about 40% of gross domestic product in 2023, below the United States at 68% and the European Union at 52%. The government said in its 15th five-year plan for 2026 to 2030 that it would sharply raise that share.
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly invoked the phrase "the East is rising and the West is declining." Yi said inflated figures may have fostered overconfidence among Chinese leaders and anxiety in the United States about being overtaken. Based on his estimate, he projected that China's population could shrink to 320 million by 2100. The U.N. projection released in 2024 put the 2100 figure at 633 million.