Contemporary China Review 2026
The journal is also pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Yi Fuxian as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Dr. Yi is a Senior Scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an internationally recognized authority on China's population studies. His research has been widely cited by governments, think tanks, and international policy institutions, and has received extensive coverage in major international media, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
This issue's Scholars' Monograph section features China's Population Data Manipulation, a six-part study by Dr. Yi comprising more than 40,000 words. It offers a systematic and in-depth examination of the reliability of China's official population data.
Since 2000, Dr. Yi has devoted himself to the study of China's population trends and spearheaded the movement against China's population control policies, contributing to the eventual abolition of the one-child policy. His population estimates and projections have repeatedly proven more accurate than those of Chinese official sources, the United Nations, and the U.S. Census Bureau. He has argued that China's officially reported population has been overstated by at least 130 million.
This monograph corroborates this claim through cross-validation with multiple independent datasets-including census records, education data (such as school enrollment and graduation figures), live birth and vaccination data, household registration data, and mortality statistics-as well as comparisons of provincial demographic data with national figures. It also examines how fiscal policies and incentives-including education and healthcare financing arrangements and the distribution of provincial fiscal revenues and expenditures relative to national totals-have influenced the accuracy of China's demographic data. Dr. Yi is conducting follow-up research to reconstruct China's actual demographic profile, with results forthcoming in this journal.
The importance of Dr. Yi's research cannot be overstated. Distorted demographic data misled not only China's population, economic, social, defense, and foreign policies, but also international investment decisions and foreign governments' policies toward China. For example, inflated demographic estimates led Chinese government economists to project that China's economy would become two to three times the size of the U.S. economy, reinforcing the narrative of "the rise of the East and the decline of the West" and contributing to a strategic shift from Deng Xiaoping-era integration with the West toward competition and even confrontation. Such exaggerated expectations also intensified U.S. strategic anxieties, including those framed by the "Thucydides Trap." Therefore, Dr. Yi's reassessment and reconstruction of China's demographic profile carry profound academic and policy significance. If adopted by governments and global investors, his demographic assessments could have far-reaching geopolitical and economic implications.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
