Project Syndicate talks to Yi Fuxian about China's decision-making, economic
prospects, demographic crisis, and more
Jan 31, 2025
This week we talk with Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, who spear-headed the movement against China's one-child
policy and is the author of Big Country with an Empty Nest
<https://www.abebooks.com/Big-Country-Empty-NestChinese-Edition-XIAN/11090336926/bd> (China Development Press, 2013), which went from being banned
<https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/china-one-child-policy-book-fuxian-yi/> in China to
<http://culture.people.com.cn/n/2013/1220/c172318-23899848.html> ranking
first in China Publishing Today's 100 Best Books of 2013 in China.
Project Syndicate: Just a few years ago, the "Chinese century" was widely
regarded as imminent. But, as you observe in your contribution to the
forthcoming PS Quarterly magazine, international economists are now lowering
their growth expectations for China and warning of the "Japanification" of
its economy. What does this emerging narrative get right, and what is it
missing?
Yi Fuxian: For decades, mainstream analysts unanimously predicted that
China's economy would surpass that of the United States. The Economist
projected
<https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2011/01/10/how-to-gracefully-step-a
side> in 2010 that this would happen in 2019. Goldman Sachs forecast
<https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/05/11/how-soon-and-at-what-height-w
ill-chinas-economy-peak> in 2011 that this point would be reached in 2026.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research, a British think tank,
predicted
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-chinas-economy-surpass-the-u-s-s-some-now
-doubt-it-11662123945?mod=article_inline> that 2028 would be the year.
Chinese government economist Justin Yifu Lin
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/justin-yifu-lin> was even
bolder, arguing
<http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0325/c40531-24727451.html> in 2011
that, by 2030, China's economy would be twice the size of America's.
1.
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/erwin-chemerinsky> Erwin
Chemerinsky worries about the obvious lack of meaningful checks on Donald
Trump's worst impulses.
The Chinese authorities were initially wary
<https://style.sina.com.cn/news/2010-01-20/085255242.shtml> of economists'
rosy projections
<https://www.reuters.com/article/world/china-overtakes-japan-as-no-2-economy
-fx-chief-idUSTRE66T1HT/> , but began to embrace
<https://www.jingjidaokan.com/icms/null/null/ns:LHQ6LGY6LGM6MmM5NDkzOWM1MGE4
MjFmMjAxNTBjYjA2OGM2NDA1NzYscDosYTosbTo=/show.vsml> them in 2014, touting
China's institutional advantage
<http://xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/22/c_137765967.htm> . In 2016, the
government added
<https://chinamediaproject.org/2021/12/29/and-then-there-were-five/>
"culture" to its "confidence doctrine," which already included the "path,"
"theory," and "system" of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." But
these "four confidences" - and the lofty projections of mainstream analysts
- neglected a crucial factor: the legacy of China's one-child policy.
The consequences of that policy - an aging population and shrinking labor
force - were already transforming China's economic base. That is why I told
The New York Times in 2016 that China would never overtake
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/world/asia/china-yi-fuxian-boao-family-p
lanning.html> the US economically. My words were intended as a warning to
China's leaders, whom I had previously engaged with as a state guest. But
rather than listen, they blacklisted me
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/opinion/chinese-economy-yi-fuxian.html>
.
At the same time, Chinese authorities adhere to the Marxist principle of
economic determinism; so, while they were unwilling to face demographic
realities, they could not ignore the changes altogether. They thus began to
pursue regressive policies in several domains, from politics and diplomacy
to economic regulation, social reform, and judicial development. In this
sense, 2015-16 was a watershed moment for China.
In 2019, when I published another commentary
<https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2180421/worse-jap
an-how-chinas-looming-demographic-crisis-will> arguing than China's looming
demographic crisis would doom its economic ambition, the authorities still
were not listening. They might not have wanted to hear that China's
demographic and economic outlook was bleaker than Japan's, but it was.
China's fertility rate has long been below Japan's - and remains so. By
2029-35, China will be worse off than the US on all demographic metrics, and
its economy will have fallen further behind.
The good news is that the mainstream narrative is now beginning to catch up
to reality. Goldman Sachs now predicts
<https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/emerging-stock-markets-proje
cted-to-overtake-the-us-by-2030> that China will overtake the US
economically in 2035 (rather than 2026), and the Economist Intelligence Unit
has pushed
<https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/emerging-stock-markets-proje
cted-to-overtake-the-us-by-2030> its 2015 forecast
<https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-gdp-is-expected-to-surpass-the-us-in
-11-years-2015-6> , which said the crossover point would arrive in 2026, to
2039. The Centre for Economics and Business Research now says
<https://www.newsweek.com/2025/01/31/china-us-compete-biggest-economies-gdp-
population-birth-rates-2010768.html> that China will not overtake the US
within the next 15 years.
These revised forecasts are a step in the right direction. Rather than
taking a linear approach, which assumes that China will continue on its
current trajectory, they take into account the country's demographic
disadvantages, which will continue to materialize. Nonetheless, they still
underestimate the severity of the problem, partly because they rely on
inflated
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/united-nations-population-figu
res-for-china-and-india-are-inflated-by-yi-fuxian-2023-05> United Nations
population figures.
PS: These insights have important implications for America's China policy,
especially now that Donald Trump has returned to the White House. Given
demographic realities - which you
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/despite-fears-about-overcapaci
ty-china-manufacturing-decline-is-inevitable-by-yi-fuxian-2024-08> argue
imply the "fall of Chinese manufacturing" - what are the gravest economic
and foreign-policy mistakes his administration is at risk of making?
YF: From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Japan was widely expected to
overtake the US economically. In fact, Americans were
<https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/10/world/americans-voicing-anxiety-on-japan
-as-concern-in-tokyo-seems-to-soften.html> more concerned by the economic
threat from Japan than by the military threat from the Soviet Union, and
many believed that
<https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/18/books/after-the-cold-war-the-land-of-the
-rising-threat.html> conflict with Japan was all but
<https://www.cato.org/commentary/remember-when-japan-was-going-take-over-wor
ld> inevitable. These concerns - which shaped US policy for well over a
decade - evaporated in the early 1990s, when Japan's economy stagnated due
to population aging. Clearly, such a profound shift in one country would
demand policy changes from its "rival."
History now seems to be repeating. Since Trump launched his "trade war"
against China in 2018, strategic anxiety, together with frustration over the
decline of US manufacturing (partly a result of unbalanced bilateral trade),
has defined US policy toward the country. This remained true under Trump's
successor, Joe Biden
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/joseph-biden-jr> .
But while US tariffs and other restrictions have succeeded at weakening
China's economy, they have done nothing to revive US manufacturing.
America's global share of manufacturing value-added has not increased, and
the manufacturing deficit, as a share of GDP, has not decreased. Moreover,
this policy approach has undermined the stability of the US-led
international order. If Trump maintains it during his second term, as
expected, China will instinctively become a "hedgehog" - closing itself into
a defensive posture, with quills that are sure to puncture a US that seeks
to "attack" it - and the world will become increasingly unstable.
Since China's economic
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-population-decline-will-
mean-economic-geopolitical-decline-by-yi-fuxian-2023-02> and manufacturing
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/despite-fears-about-overcapaci
ty-china-manufacturing-decline-is-inevitable-by-yi-fuxian-2024-08> decline
is demographically preordained, however, Trump need not allow geopolitical
anxieties to shape his China policy. This would allow for the more judicious
application of tariffs, and enable the kind of supply-chain cooperation that
would help the US to reinvigorate its manufacturing sector and reduce costs
for US producers and consumers.
The US could benefit more from bilateral economic cooperation with China
than with countries like India and Vietnam, to which supply chains have
shifted as the US "decouples" from China. Neither of these countries would
be able to increase imports from the US meaningfully, as they have lower
purchasing power per capita than China. Nor can they do much to help
revitalize US manufacturing, since they do not have strong manufacturing
industries themselves or complete industrial chains. (It would be difficult
and expensive for the US to build an industrial chain from scratch.)
But China - which still accounts for nearly one-third
<https://www.statista.com/chart/20858/top-10-countries-by-share-of-global-ma
nufacturing-output/> of global manufacturing output - could. And by forcing
China to increase its imports from the US, Trump would reduce its ability to
use its large trade surplus to exert geopolitical influence. More important,
the US must cooperate with China to maintain a stable international order,
which is crucial to enable the US to reduce military spending. By pursuing
such cooperation with the US, China would be able effectively to compensate
the US geopolitically for bilateral trade imbalances.
In PS on Sunday, PS editors curate a selection of the past week's most
relevant, incisive, and powerful commentaries, so that you have all of the
information you need as you head into the new workweek.
PS: You
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-tariffs-impact-on-chines
e-politics-by-yi-fuxian-2025-01> suggest that, by forcing China to nurture
its middle class, Trump's plan to increase tariffs on Chinese imports could
"open the way for political change of the sort Western leaders expected to
see in China decades ago." But in the latest issue of the Contemporary China
Review's "Scholars' Monograph," you argue that China will "never develop a
middle class strong enough to achieve structural political reform." What
sort of political transformation do you foresee in China in the coming
years, and what role will the Communist Party play?
YF: For over 2,000 years, an "invisible hand" has been shaping political
change in China: household income's share of GDP. In fact, it is because
household disposable income has been falling
<https://data.stats.gov.cn/index.htm> - from 62% of GDP in 1983 to 44%
today, compared to an international average of 60-70% - that a strong middle
class did not emerge in China to demand democratic reform, despite four
decades of rapid economic growth.
Low household incomes suppressed domestic consumption, leaving China highly
dependent on its trade surplus with the US to provide jobs. But this
approach may no longer be tenable: if Trump fulfills his promise to impose
sweeping new tariffs, China's leaders might have little choice but to
implement policies aimed at raising household income's share of GDP. This
would strengthen the middle class. Furthermore, by reducing the government's
financial resources (already strained by population aging), Trump's tariffs
could force China's authorities to abandon their costly and repressive
"stability-maintenance" model, and instead start compromising with their
citizens.
Nonetheless, China's middle class will never be strong enough to bring about
a democratic transition, because population aging will undermine growth and
make it impossible to raise household incomes to the international norm. We
have seen this before: Japan's
<https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD> per capita GDP
plummeted from 154% that of the US in 1995 to just 38% last year, and
household <https://www.esri.cao.go.jp/jp/sna/sonota/kakei/kakei_top.html>
disposable income fell from 61% of
<https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=dataset&toukei=
00100409> GDP to 52%, owing largely to the effects of population aging on
the economy and the public budget.
There is another problem: younger generations are typically at the vanguard
of democratization, but the share of China's population aged 15-29 has
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-has-too-few-young-people
-to-push-democratization-by-yi-fuxian-2022-12> dropped from 31% in 1989 to
16% today, and could fall to 9% by 2050. So, even if China experiences the
kind of turmoil that engulfed the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a
youth-driven pro-democracy movement would not materialize. Instead, China's
huge elderly cohort would probably willingly sacrifice their freedom and
embrace a Communist Party strongman. No political force could quickly
simultaneously restore stability, provide social security and health care
for the vast elderly population, and promote democracy.
BY THE WAY . . .
PS: You have cited several factors impeding China's ability to improve its
demographic fortunes, including, in another forthcoming article, its
Confucian tradition. What is the relationship between Confucianism and
fertility, and what is China's best-case demographic scenario, given such
fundamental constraints?
YF: Like China, the other Confucian regions - Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan,
Singapore, Korea, and Japan - have histories of vibrant economic growth, but
now face low fertility rates. In 2022, the
<https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN> fertility rate was 3.1
in the Arab world, 1.84 in Latin America, 1.67 in the US, and 1.46 in the
European Union, but only 1.26 in Japan, 0.87 in
<https://www.ris.gov.tw/documents/data/en/3/History-Table-7-2022.xls> Taiwan
and among
<https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/population/births-and
-fertility/latest-data> Singaporean Chinese, 0.78 in South Korea, 0.7 in
<https://www.healthbureau.gov.hk/statistics/en/health_statistics.htm> Hong
Kong, and 0.68 in <https://www.dsec.gov.mo/en-US/Statistic?id=101> Macau.
As a trained obstetrician, I explain this phenomenon very differently from
sociologists and demographers.
For starters, in Confucian culture, security is provided by the family, and
fertility conforms to the biological principle of "entropy reduction"
(enhancing stability and order). The prevailing Western model of social and
economic development, in which the state is responsible for delivering a
social safety net, thus amounts to a powerful shock to the Confucian system.
Moreover, Confucianism deals only with the "present life," not the
"afterlife," so it encourages people to place greater emphasis on extending
their lives, and there is a strong negative correlation
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844707/> between life expectancy and
fertility. At the same time, Confucian parents believe that it is their
children who act as a "continuation" of their own lives, so they tend to
focus less on quantity and more on quality, having only as many children as
they feel they can properly provide for. Confucianism's emphasis on
education also might impel couples to have fewer children, in order to be
able to afford their schooling, while couples are likely to spend more time
on their own educations, reducing their childbearing years
<https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html> .
Finally, Confucian regions tend to have densely populated cities, in which
housing prices are high and living conditions are stressful. Just as density
inhibits the growth of cells, bacteria, or animal populations, so, too, does
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387817300135> it
lead to reduced fertility <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/> .
Of course, Confucianism alone is not to blame for China's demographic woes.
A half-century of population control has transformed Chinese people's views
of childbearing, and social and economic patterns are still aligned with the
one-child policy. This helps to explain why China's fertility rate is as low
as Taiwan's, even though its social development lags behind the island's by
nearly two decades. The more developed Chinese province of Shanghai had a
fertility rate <https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27481953> of
just 0.6 in 2023. Avoiding demographic and civilizational collapse requires
nothing less than a social, economic, cultural, and political paradigm
shift.
PS: You also point out in the latest "Scholars' Monograph" that Russian
President Vladimir Putin has been banking on stable relations with a "rising
China" to prevent the "declining West" from holding him accountable for his
war of aggression in Ukraine. More broadly, China has been presenting itself
as a crucial partner for emerging and developing economies, capable of
leading an effective challenge to Western dominance. Will China's looming
economic decline thwart such efforts altogether? How should developing
economies be approaching their ties with China?
YF: There are some in both China and the US that want to fan the flames of
conflict. For example, Chinese ultra-nationalists might want their country
to challenge US hegemony more assertively, or American special interest
groups might hope to profit off a clash. So, Chinese and American scholars
have dressed up China, an old and sick cat, as a ferocious tiger and coaxed
it into a fight with the actual tiger that is the US.
In 2019, Putin said, "when tigers fight in the valley, the smart monkey sits
aside and waits to see who wins." In 2022, after more than two years of
watching, Russia finally took advantage of US-China enmity to launch its
full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, developing economies - misled by overly optimistic narratives
about China's economic prospects - jostled to get into China's good graces.
China's leaders, for their part, were intoxicated by the geopolitical
influence that accompanies economic clout. In 2021 - when China's GDP
<https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD>
reached 75% of America's, and seemed to be on the verge of surpassing it -
Chinese diplomats were vowing
<https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1277623.shtml> to "carry forward
the fighting spirit" to build
<https://www.mohrss.gov.cn/SYrlzyhshbzb/dongtaixinwen/shizhengyaowen/202106/
t20210602_415601.html> a "new international order" to replace the existing
West-led system.
But, predictably, China soon began losing economic ground, and last year,
its GDP amounted to just 65% of US GDP. Perhaps recognizing that the
economic foundations underpinning their political ambitions are growing
shakier, Chinese leaders are now lowering their diplomatic profile and
seeking to improve relations with the West.
While China's decline is inevitable, it will be gradual, and China will
remain the world's second- or third-largest economy for decades to come.
Developing economies should not expect China to be their economic savior,
but they can still benefit from cooperation with China - if debt is managed
properly. Similarly, China cannot build a credible new world order, but its
cooperation is essential to enable the US to uphold global stability. China
has plenty of reason to embrace such cooperation: if the existing order
collapses, China's position in whatever replaces it will be even less
favorable.
PS: You recently <https://x.com/fuxianyi/status/1823879531544846604> posted
that many failures of Chinese policy - not least the "demographic time bomb"
that was the one-child policy - are rooted in the fact that the "Chinese
government's decision-making process remains shrouded in secrecy." While
China certainly keeps much from outsiders - as you
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/opinion/chinese-economy-yi-fuxian.html>
learned firsthand in campaigning against the one-child policy - the scale of
secrecy within China's government is more difficult to assess. Are Chinese
authorities reliably operating on the basis of accurate information? To what
extent could official secrecy contribute to strategic and economic
miscalculations in the coming years?
YF: Fertility rules exemplify the fatal flaw in China's decision-making
process.
The one-child policy was implemented nationwide in 1980, after scholars,
such as the aerospace engineer Song Jian, gave China's leaders a "scientific
basis" for <https://rmrb.online/simple/?t533325.html> predicting that,
without population control, the Chinese population would exceed 4.2 billion
by 2080. In reality, China's population would have peaked at roughly
<https://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/great-fall-of-china/> 1.6 billion, then
gradually declined - meaning that no population-control policy was
necessary. But the country's leaders did not want to hear that: criticism of
the one-child policy was strictly forbidden. It took me several years of
<https://issuu.com/uwequilibrium.com/docs/eq_volume_13_spread_/s/22293088>
relentless effort to get my message heard.
That message - conveyed in a series of articles, reports, and a book
<https://strongwindhk.com/product/9789889972530/> published between 2000
and 2007 - was that, even if population controls were abolished, the
fertility rate would fall from 1.95 in 2006 to 1.47 in 2023, with the
population peaking at less than 1.4 billion. My predictions proved
prescient, but the Chinese authorities banned my book, because its argument
clashed with official predictions
<http://www.nhc.gov.cn/guihuaxxs/s3585u/201502/c62a5d1a5ad54ea3b4b268777d3ae
6ff.shtml> that the fertility rate would stabilize at 1.8 under the
one-child policy, and that the population would peak at 1.5 billion by 2033.
By 2012, China's leaders had little choice but to consider loosening
fertility rules, so I was invited to produce a 50,000-word internal report
on the topic. And in 2013, a new edition of my book was published
<https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/china-o
ne-child-policy-book-fuxian-yi/> by a publisher under the Chinese State
Council. But my prediction - that a two-child policy could only temporarily
boost the fertility rate to 1.4, with it then falling to 1.0 in 2026 - again
clashed with the forecasts of official demographers. They argued (absurdly)
that loosening the rules slightly would cause births to explode far beyond
the limit, increasing
<http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2013/1117/c1001-23564443.html> the
fertility rate to 4.4-4.5 births per woman, with 47-50 million births per
year <https://rkyj.ruc.edu.cn/CN/abstract/abstract3271.shtml> .
So, the Chinese authorities rejected my advice to abolish population
control, introducing
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666933123000497> the
two-child policy selectively in 2014 and universally in 2016. But they did
not stop there: hey also blocked
<https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/china-o
ne-child-policy-book-fuxian-yi/> the long-delayed publication of my book.
More than a dozen publishing houses, including one affiliated with the
Policy Research Office of the Communist Party's Central Committee, have
tried to publish my books, but none has been able to get approval from the
Chinese authorities.
But, again, it soon became clear that ignoring and suppressing information
does not make it less true. When the two-child policy came into effect in
January 2016, annual births were expected
<http://www.lib.swu.edu.cn/opac/book/7791405> to peak at 21.9 million in
2018, and fall to 15.5 million by 2023. But even official data
<http://www.nhc.gov.cn/mohwsbwstjxxzx/tjtjnj/202106/04bd2ba9592f4a70b78d80ea
50bfe96e.shtml> show that there were only 13.6 million births in 2018, and
those figures are grossly inflated. I was placed under investigation for
several months in 2017 for pointing out
<https://www.ft.com/content/bb91ae64-3fc2-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58> that
Chinese government overstates fertility figures. And when I reported
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/china-population-
crisis.html> , in 2019, that China's population had already started
declining, rather than by 2031 as officially predicted, China's most
authoritative news portal, People's Daily, ranked my statement third in its
list of the "top ten rumors
<http://society.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0103/c1008-31533810.html.> " of the
year. Soon, however, the Chinese authorities were forced, yet again, to face
reality - or, at least, some version of it - reporting
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/chinas-population-declines-first-time-de
cades-rcna65928> in 2022 that the population had indeed begun to decline.
China's population figures have been tampered with for so many decades that
no one - not even President Xi Jinping - knows the real numbers. Small
wonder, then, that the authorities still have not recognized the severity of
the demographic crisis and abolished population controls. In 2021, when the
three-child policy was introduced, China's leaders were still more afraid of
a 1950s-style <http://paper.ce.cn/pad/content/202201/19/content_228984.html>
population explosion than population aging and shrinking. In 2023, there
were only 9.02
<https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-drops-2nd-year-raises
-long-term-growth-concerns-2024-01-17/> million births in China, reflecting
a fertility rate of just 1.0.
The Chinese government's penchant for selecting data it wants to believe,
and obscuring unfavorable data, has also had consequences for the economy
<https://time.com/6961199/us-china-economy/> , public health
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9qjjj4zy5o> , and defense
<https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-xi-legacy-10192024230723.html>
. At times, the government conceals unfavorable or politically sensitive
information: for example, youth-unemployment figures were not published
<https://apnews.com/article/china-youth-unemployment-slowdown-321cd96377ee06
6915fc39232b9477c3#:~:text=The%20statistics%20bureau%20stopped%20publishing,
years%20of%20pandemic%2Dera%20isolation.> for several months in 2023. Other
times, the authorities refuse
<https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-attempts-lift-confidence-economy
-fall-flat-2024-01-24/> to acknowledge worrisome trends or data. Recently,
the prominent economist Gao Shanwen was investigated
<https://www.wsj.com/world/china/xi-jinping-muzzles-chinese-economist-who-da
red-to-doubt-gdp-numbers-2a2468ef> and severely punished for questioning
China's official economic data. Before long, China's actual economic
performance will be as difficult to discern as its demographic situation.
<https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/yi-fuxian>
Yi Fuxian <https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/yi-fuxian>
Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
spear-headed the movement against China's one-child policy and is the author
of Big Country with an Empty Nest
<https://www.abebooks.com/Big-Country-Empty-NestChinese-Edition-XIAN/1109033
6926/bd> (China Development Press, 2013), which went from being banned
<https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/china-o
ne-child-policy-book-fuxian-yi/> in China to ranking first
<http://culture.people.com.cn/n/2013/1220/c172318-23899848.html> in China
Publishing Today's 100 Best Books of 2013 in China.
