China’s census shows its population is nearing its peak

RARELY DOES a census attract attention and controversy—unless the country counting its people is both the world’s largest and on the brink of decline, and its statisticians are notorious for fiddling their figures. So the results of China’s seventh census, conducted last year and released on May 11th, were big news. According to the data, the population reached 1.41bn last year, up by 5.4% from a decade ago. That ran contrary to a report last month in the Financial Times saying that China’s population fell below 1.4bn, which would have marked the first decline in six decades.

Adding to the intrigue around the census was its delay. The National Bureau of Statistics had originally promised to publish the figures in the first half of April. As ever with Chinese data, there were some oddities. Taken at face value, the population increase in 2020 when compared with annual birth figures suggested that, miraculously, no one died last year.