zlacker

>>bookof+(OP)
I don't trust China's population numbers at all. Officially before the one child policy they were at 800 million. After 30 years of 1 child policy somehow they were at 1.2 billion. The math isn't mathing. How do you have explosive population growth when birth control is brutally enforced?

The official fertility rates for that period was 1.3. For reference: 2.1 is the replacement rate.

If anything their total population went down during one child policy.

>>zadkey+Fm
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?

>>3roden+ao
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.

>>empres+ot
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.