Did China overestimate its births? Leaked data raises questions

Differences between official census, hacked information identified by scholar in U.S.

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Information produced by a major data breach suggests births in China have declined consistently for the past two decades. © Reuters

IORI KAWATE, Nikkei staff writer

BEIJING -- A trove of data obtained in a massive cybersecurity breach has raised questions as to whether the Chinese government overestimated birth totals in the official census.

The data was stolen by a hacker who claimed to have accessed personal information on 1 billion Chinese citizens kept by the Shanghai police, sending the country's social media into a frenzy over the news.

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