China has long been overreporting its population, over 100 million people fewer than officially claimed, a Chinese demographer told Newsweek.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Yi Fuxian said the censuses China carries out every 10 years are “seriously overestimated” in an effort to match official estimates. The annual data should be corrected with the census data, he said.

China’s population, which Beijing put at 1.41 billion as of 2023, remains the second largest in the world, surpassed last year by India. Questions over the population calculation come as the country grapples with the twin challenges of dropping fertility rates and a growth in the number of senior citizens, a trend many analysts fear will drag on the country’s…