Global population datasets underrepresent rural population

As the saying goes in China "the mountains are high and the emperor is far away."

China is certainly an impressive surveillance state but the reality is that the geography is so large that it is possible to miss things like human trafficking: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/05/world/asia/xu...

> Also, China isn't rural Alaska, it is a centralized authoritarian surveillance state and not the kind of place one can go off the grid and raise a family.

Through some combination of state propaganda (their own and China's) and dystopian fiction like 1984, Westerners drastically overestimate the capabilities of the Chinese state. It would be more accurate to say that China wants to be perceived as a centralized authoritarian surveillance state, because that perception is valuable both domestically and abroad. They absolutely do have a broad surveillance apparatus, but they also have millions of square miles and more than a billion people to surveil and control.

Don't forget that we're talking about the government that has been unable to pull together either the political will or the state power to enforce health codes that would be considered table stakes for any developed democracy, ignoring or tolerating disease-spreading wet markets. They appear to pick and choose their authoritarian battles, and if you're not a battle they've chosen you can probably go ignored for a lifetime.

Its actually not that uncommon. China is not a monolithic entity. Rules are flexible and always have work around. In some cases, rural families that have a girl as a first kid will try again for a boy. They just don't register the girl for hukou.

> it is a centralized authoritarian surveillance state and not the kind of place one can go off the grid and raise a family.

The logistics of centrally surveilling a massive area of land are pretty tough, much more tougher than we imagine I think.

Historically independency seeking people learn how to flee from aggressive governments and move to places that make it harder to track them. Including cutting down on written documents that could expose their org., adopting social structures that decentralize leadership etc.

It was fascinating to me, I highly recommend checking the Zomia region.

e.g.:

https://medium.com/@matthijsbijl/welcome-to-zomia-the-anarch...

The three-child policy was lifted just months later after some outcry: https://fortune.com/2021/07/21/china-three-child-policy-decl...

It’s been just over a decade since I lived in China in a tier-1 city, but back then it was common to hear things like rural people would have multiple children, with only one registered.

When we are speaking of children, time is on another scale. An 18 year period creates whole adults from nothing.

2015 means there are legal 10 years olds that would have not been legal before. And I expect some grey area 11 and 12 year olds that are surprisingly mature for their age.

This is hyperbole. It took China until a few years ago to be able to fully control crypto mining which was happening at industrial scale in China. My guess is that the Chinese accepted the draconian one child policy because the famine collectively affected them. They do not accept a lot of other things and the state is not as powerful as you think it is.

Another case is covid. The state tried to maintain the lockdown (which was partially supported by some of the population) but at a certain point they can no longer maintain the dissatisfaction and had to fully open back up.

It would be cool if any of our parties would give a fuck about how any of us are doing, but they don't. The communist party is supposed to be in tune with the people, and you can only do that by being with the people to understand what they need. Western propaganda pathologizes this to benefit capitalist ideology, because capitalists only are with the people to control them and make them work faster.

Because the federal government was meant to be extremely limited and mostly serve to mediate _actual_ interstate commerce and foreign affairs. The oft ignored 10th amendment left most everything else to states or the people.

The system wasn't designed to fairly accommodate the gigantic social benefits, massive regulatory apparatus, and local spending apparatus the feds now get involved in. The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. If they planned on that stuff being constitutional they'd have likely made the Senate more like the house in composition.

That’s not what Gerrymandering means, which refers to a process of carving up improbably shaped constituencies to create safe electoral seats by choosing the voters. The senate is just plainly 2 per state as a compromise to keep large populace states from steamrolling small or sparsely populated states. You may criticize that compromise but it’s not gerrymandering.

That's why the house exists? Senate is equal representation for states. House is equal representation for people.

Also the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population.

What am I missing here? I feel like that's basic information.

:)

I understand that, and the fact that basing yourself on population alone is simple and easy to understand.

But, your rural areas may be over half of your territory. People living there also matter, and the needs of those territories are very different.

Just to bring an example of how the current system backfires:

- we need railroads to reopen so we are able to sell produce to our own industry base competitevely

- we are always told there aren't enough people here, so no railroads. Even though, the primary objective of those wouldn't be to transport people

- we sell our produce to the neighbouring country instead, given it is closer than our own country's industrial hotspots. By selling off raw produce, our country will end up earning less than if it were processed by our own food industry.

- without much economic incentive to remain living there, many will emigrate.

- less people = even less representative power.

The cycle continues...

Now, I don't have a solution. It is a difficult problem to solve. One could be to have a higher minimum number of representatives per region, as the lowest populated region only elects 2, 24 times less than the highest populated one. And, just to show how different the political landscape is when compared to the US: the metropolitan regions have voted way more to the far right and far left parties than the rural regions have, which have led to a lot of divisive political outcomes.

> Is there any evidence of how accurately the US census actually does that job?

Yes. The Census uses a post-enumeration survey for this purpose. They found evidence of significant under- or over-counting in 14 states for the 2020 census.

That was considerably worse than the 2010 census, though covid might be partly to blame. Still, afaik, there wasn't anywhere near the rural undercount described in the article.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-u...

US rural people tend to trust the government less, so I could definitely see them getting undercounted.

The census should really have an option for refusers that collects an absolute minimum of information. The Constitution only asks that people be counted, not that they be broken down into categories.

At least it's just the short form now. Prior to 2010, one out of six people got the long form, which had ten pages of questions for each person in the household. Here's a pdf: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/d...

> Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once".

Do you have any thoughts on how the US census takes your insightful comment's points into account?

I imagine it's got to be quite an involved process given the vast differences in US geography, kinda blows my mind thinking about even basic stuff like age demographics vs. taking into account how many people died on census day.

But then - maybe that's too granular and it all balances out in the end? Or at least, it does if you use special magic sauce the US census has covered?

Trump 45 admin did not prioritize the census and their ramp up wasn’t particularly good as compared to past years. In my city there was like 30% fewer enumerators.

In the US, rural undercounting isn’t really a problem politically, although it has negative impacts on revenue allocation that is population based like sales taxes.

The biggest issue is that poor residents are underreported. This is both an urban and rural issue but from a numbers perspective impacts urban areas more.

The census has an official date to avoid issues like this. Since they lived at the house across the street from you on the official census date of April 1st 2020, the census worker was correct to record them at that address.

They would only have been double counted if they incorrectly reported living at their new address as of April 1st.

Return to Dust (隐入尘烟) - 2022 has some similarities but won’t say more (no spoil).

The movie is great and China censorship story worth a glance. There no direct critics but it depicts some collaterals of rural areas transformations. Also poetic and contemplative.