The "Straits Times" reported that China has discovered around 12 million children it was unaware of (unregistered). According to the report mentioned by "Straits Times," citing a report from "Bloomberg," China reduced the number of children born between 2000 and 2010 by at least 11.6 million — equivalent to the current population of Belgium — partly due to its strict one-child policy. The latest annual statistical book released by the government estimates the number of children born during that period at 172.5 million, which is much higher than the 160.9 million in that age group recorded in the 2010 census.
The report indicated that "the discrepancy might be due to some parents' failure to register births to avoid penalties for violating the one-child policy," while China only started allowing all couples to have a second child in 2016. This means that some parents may not have officially reported a newborn if they exceeded the designated quota until the child reached six years old and needed to be registered for school, according to independent demographic expert He Yafu.
It's noteworthy that "about 57% of the later registered children were girls, suggesting that the discrepancy may be partially related to parents not reporting girls so that they could continue trying to have boys," according to the report. Additionally, the 2010 census was conducted on November 1, 2010, so it is possible that some births in the last two months of the year were missed, while census surveys typically do not include individuals who died or emigrated in the intervening years, as mentioned in the report.
It is worth noting that the revisions illustrate the difficulty in accurately counting the population in the world’s most populous country. The report clarified that birth rates for the years 2011 to 2017 were adjusted upward in the latest annual statistical book, suggesting that the issue of declining numbers of children likely persisted after 2010.
