(Newsweek) – China’s fertility rate, or births expected per woman during her lifetime, amid the rising cost of living in major cities and shifting cultural attitudes toward having children, is 1.0. This puts the country in the company of neighboring South Korea (0.72), Japan (1.2), and Taiwan (estimated to be 0.85).

Yi called the implications of inaccurate population reporting “hard to overstate.” “It means that China’s decades of population control policies are all wrong and that all of China’s economic, foreign, and defense policies, as well as those of the U.S. and other countries towards China, are based on faulty demographic data.” (Read More)