China, and maybe some other Asian countries have a household registration ( hukou 户口) system.
Only people born into the system get to exist for things like schools, national insurance, etc.
So any unofficially born second children (or hidden first born daughters) didn’t get to legally count under this.
Also; children born out of marriage don’t exist for state schools or benefits, either.
Where your hukou is limits your options for access to housing, claims on social security and health insurance, and the like.
Mostly if you were born into a very rural area your only pathway to legally having a place to live and for your children to go to school in another part of the country is via university graduation.
There are pushes to change this system, and smaller cities are removing their requirements for non-rural hukou. But Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities you have probably heard of are yet to do this.
The 2000 census came up short, so officials launched a campaign to add tens of millions of “missing” people, bringing the official population close to initial estimates, Yi said. But a closer look at demographics showed a glaring disparity, Yi said. Around 164.24 million babies were born between 1991 and 2000. After accounting for these births and subtracting deaths and net migration, there were about 40 million fewer Chinese than reported.
They killed so many girls the population fell more than expected.
Unfortunately, the harsh truth was more often a doctor who was tasked with second pregnancies whose job details made all the other hospital staff realise he was a monster.
A place with lots of suspicious bath-drownings if a baby had the misfortune of being born a girl during the one child policy.
While that definitely happened, the thankful reality is that many families raised their daughters unofficially.
The demographic charts suggest otherwise.
China, and maybe some other Asian countries have a household registration ( hukou 户口) system.
Only people born into the system get to exist for things like schools, national insurance, etc.
So any unofficially born second children (or hidden first born daughters) didn’t get to legally count under this.
Also; children born out of marriage don’t exist for state schools or benefits, either.
Where your hukou is limits your options for access to housing, claims on social security and health insurance, and the like. Mostly if you were born into a very rural area your only pathway to legally having a place to live and for your children to go to school in another part of the country is via university graduation.
There are pushes to change this system, and smaller cities are removing their requirements for non-rural hukou. But Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities you have probably heard of are yet to do this.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-hiding-population-secret-1926834
They killed so many girls the population fell more than expected.
Unfortunately, the harsh truth was more often a doctor who was tasked with second pregnancies whose job details made all the other hospital staff realise he was a monster.