Not entirely implausible. Population is one of those things that is basically impossible for any individual to empirically verify.
That said, several things to consider:
- Chinese families WERE absolutely WAY larger in the 40-60s even with all the war and turmoil, they were in the baby boom like everywhere else on earth.
- One child policy didn’t come into effect until 1979
- One child policy has always been very difficult to enforce, especially outside of the cities and before the type of panoptic technologies that weren’t even a thing until around the time with the policy was lifted (2015). Anyways, the very poor in the countryside had multiple children due to the limits of the state, as did the urban rich, as they could simply pay the fines.
That said, a fair rule of thumb is that all numbers out of the Chinese government are lies, ESPECIALLY very large or very small numbers.
#plebchain
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