Jinshan District

So if China is starting from a population that appears to be at least 120 million people larger than it really is, and that population is declining at a rate faster than they expect, it's not inconceivable that their population at the end of the century could land meaningfully below the 630 million figure they commonly cite, potentially putting them in the same range as the United States, rather than comfortably above it.

We could cite other anecdotes, like leaked data out of Jinshan, a district of Shanghai, which in March of this year showed a one-month trend of 108 births versus 453 deaths in that district alone.

Or the fact that China's Ministry of Civil Affairs used to publish national cremation numbers every quarter, then simply stopped after 2022.

And that was right as one province's own leaked numbers, before they could be scrubbed, showed cremations jumping more than 70% that winter.