How could Fuxian Yi fake data and spread his lies so easily worldwide?
The world
is full of fake news, but most of the fake news are short-lived. Because the
world is also full of different people with different views, if a pro-Trump newspaper
published fake news, then a pro-Clinton newspaper may find out the truth, and
vice versa. If a pro-CCP media published fake news, then an anti-CCP media may
find out the truth, and vice versa.
However,
there does exist one exception. A man created a piece of sensational news that
quickly spread across the whole world, but none of the media dares to reveal
the truth even after that information was proved to be nothing but a pants-on-fire lie.
How could he successfully fool the world in such a shameless way?
Back in
early 2013, Global Times, a ‘Chinese tabloid known for its hawkish
views’, as described by The New York Times, published an information that soon
became a hot news attracting the attention of the world media.
According to the article titled ‘The Pain of Family Who Lost Their Only Child Must Be Taken Seriously’(http://news.sina.com.cn/pl/2012-05-12/095024405890.shtml), more than 10 million Chinese families would lose their only child before the year 2035.
According to the article titled ‘The Pain of Family Who Lost Their Only Child Must Be Taken Seriously’(http://news.sina.com.cn/pl/2012-05-12/095024405890.shtml), more than 10 million Chinese families would lose their only child before the year 2035.
That article is authored by Fuxian Yi, a Chinese scholar who works as ‘senior
scientist’ in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is active in the so-called 'Anti-Family-Plan' propaganda which uses human rights as disguise but actually is full of lies and prejudices .
Because of his such identities, that information and his data was quickly swept across the world, nearly all of the major state-owned media in China, such as CNTV, People’s Daily, Reference News and China News Agency, put articles about the news on their website .
Even New York Times had quoted this data at the end of an article titled ‘In China, Loss of a Child Means Orphan Parents.’
'Over all, of 10,000 people born, 463 will die by the age of 25, he said in an email, citing state data. If so, eventually about 10 million families in China may face a grief like Mrs. Crawley’s.' The NYT article said.
Because of his such identities, that information and his data was quickly swept across the world, nearly all of the major state-owned media in China, such as CNTV, People’s Daily, Reference News and China News Agency, put articles about the news on their website .
Even New York Times had quoted this data at the end of an article titled ‘In China, Loss of a Child Means Orphan Parents.’
'Over all, of 10,000 people born, 463 will die by the age of 25, he said in an email, citing state data. If so, eventually about 10 million families in China may face a grief like Mrs. Crawley’s.' The NYT article said.
However,
while this information conquered the world like a hurricane, none of the journalists
or editors who spread the news ever questioned Yi about how he drew such conclusion
or whether that data is reliable.
In a
paragraph of blog article in Chinese language (http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-385383-916105.html),
Yi himself explained where the data ‘10 million’ came from, as he said,
‘According to the data about single-child
families from“2005 China 1% Population Survey Data Assemblies” and the age-specific
mortality rates from “2000 China Population Census”, I approximately calculated
that, out of every 1,0000 children born in China, 360 would die before 10 years
old, 463 would die before 25 years old, 760 would die before 44 years old.
Suppose Chinese women generally give birth to children at the age of 26, then
out of the 218 million mothers with single-child, 10 million by the age of 51
and 16.56 million by the age of 70 would lost their children.’
The world
just accepted what Yi said as truth, till 4 years later, in 2017, when some
people suggested that, Yi most probably drew such a conclusion by simply adding
up the mortality rates by ages from ‘2000 China Population Census’(http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/renkoupucha/2000pucha/html/t0604.htm).
What you need is to add up the three figures in green frames (425913 +52137 +11546=489596), and then divide it by the total sum of the three figures in blue frames (70548254+94790828+25673861=191012943). So you get the MR of this group of children: 489596/191012943≈2.56‰
----
（An update on 12 Feb, 2018:
After I posted my suspicion and question on the UW community of reddit, a person called "Gibborim" pointed out that there were some flaw in my calculations. If I understand correctly, his or her meaning is that: what Fuxian Yi said "of 10,000 people born, 463 will die by the age of 25" ≠ the MR of age 0-25.
Gibborim also said that, using the data from the form mentioned above, I "can't do math".
The truth is: no, I COULD calculate the MR of age 0-25 of that year with those data; but Fuxian Yi CAN'T calculate how many people would die before the age 25 by using the same data. To do so, he also need the mortality datum of every year of every age. For example, to calculate how many people born in 1975 have died before they reach age 25, except the mortality datum of them in 2000, he also need the mortality data of them when they were age 0, 1, 2...to 24.
This person "Gibborim" also blamed me that I "ignore 91% of the year 0 deaths, 90% of the 1 year deaths, 88.9% of the 2 year deaths, 87.5% of year 3 deaths, 85.7% of the year 4 deaths, 83.3% of the year 5 deaths..."and so on.
The problem is, in the form (mentioned above) which Fuxian Yi used to do his calculations, these data were not provided, how could I ignore something that don't exist at all?
Actually, I didn't ignore those data which didn't exist. It is Fuxian Yi and "Gibborim" who faked those numbers by applying the mortality rates of 2000 to other 25 years.
At the time when I first wrote this article, I thought Yi had faked only one group of data, but now I could see that he actually faked 25 groups of data by doing calculations in this way, as he said he had calculated by using these limited data from this form that 'over all, of 10,000 people born, 463 will die by the age of 25" on NYT.
25 years, one quarter of a century, that's a long time, and lots and lots of things would change during such a long period.
If we count back 25 years from 2000 to the year 1975, when Monster Mao still lived and controlled the country in his absurd and crazy way, and when Fuxian Yi, who came from Hunan, the same province as Mao, was only several years old perhaps, what would we see?
In 1975, absolute poverty and hunger were still widespread in China. The economy of the whole country was on the verge of collapsing because of Mao's cruel political movements. Lots of children were dead or dying because of malnutrition, disease and other reasons, 54.98‰ Chinese babies could not survive the first year after their birth .
After 25 years, in 2000, many people in this country still lived in poverty, but at least hunger and malnutrition were not widespread. The survival rate of babies under age one has been greatly improved, although about 30‰ of them died whatsoever before they reached age one.
We need another 15 years to see this data decreased to about 10‰. Still not good enough, but much better than that in 2000.
And I think this improvement is enough to prove how absurd Fuxian Yi was while he faked those mortality data by applying the MRs of the year 2000 to other 25 or more years in the future.
And also, Yi made another big mistake by applying the mortality data (which he faked out as I analyzed above) of the whole country to the "single-child", just as you could not use the same data × the population of woman or man or caner patients to calculate how many woman or man or cancer patients would die. Because each of these groups has different MR.
This means that the data Yi faked out in such ways are nothing but lies upon many lies.
Actually, according to a scholar WANG Guangzhou （王广州), since China has adopted the Family Plan policy in the middle of 1970's, there are 644.5 thousand women older than age 35 that have lost their single-child till 2010 (from an article "《独生子女死亡总量及变化趋势研究》" ) . And one official study from the Chinese government shows there are 660 thousand single-child families that have suffered the same misery till 2010.
So how could the number of such families reach 10 million after another 35 years or so? It seems that Fuxian Yi needs a BIG massacre aiming at the single-child of China to make his prediction become true.
Of course all such people called "single-child" would die sooner or later as they grow old. But one could not come to the conclusion that "their parents lose them" since most probably the parents would have died then, before their single-child died a natural death. And this is the mistake which WANG Guangzhou made in his edition of "10 million".）
Gibborim even went so far as to list the numbers of people died every year for all age group according to the MRs in that form. Actually it is totally unnecessary for him or her to do so, let me show you why and how.
If we use the character "n" to represent the average population of certain age, and A, B, C, D, E...to represent the MR of age 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the year 2000, then, for example, of 10,000 people born, how many will die by the age of 2?
First, the people die at age 0 should be n*A
then, the people die at age 1: (n-n*A)*B=n*B-n*A*B
and that of age 2:[n-n*A-(n*B-n*A*B)]*C=n*C-n*A*C-n*B*C+n*A*B*C
So, the total number of people died by age 2 should be n*A+n*B-n*A*B+n*C-n*A*C-n*B*C+n*A*B*C= n*A+n*B+n*C-n*A*B-n*A*C-n*B*C+n*A*B*C
And so, every 10,000 people born, the number of people died by age 2 should be:
(n*A+n*B+n*C-n*A*B-n*A*C-n*B*C+n*A*B*C) *10,000
n*10,000
and so x=(A+B+C-A*B-A*C-B*C+A*B*C)*10 000/10 000This means that figure x actually has nothing to do with the number of population you use in your calculation.
According to the form mentioned above, the MR of age 0 was 26.9‰（or 0.0269），of age 1 was 2.49‰（or 0.00249），of age 2 was 1.60‰（or 0.0016）, so:
A*B=0.000066981≈0.00007，
A*C=0.00004304 ≈0.00004
B*C=0.00003984 ≈0.000005
A*B*C=0.0000001072
Such numbers are very very tiny in fact that you could almost ignore them. And that explains why Fuxian Yi's data are so close to the MRs concerned added together.
------
Now here
are the questions: Is it possible that Mr. Yi didn’t know the correct method of
calculating the mortality data? or he knew the correct method but intentionally used the
wrong one so that he could get those sensational figures?
If the former is true, then it proves that Mr. Yi lacks the basic mathematical skills to do scientific research; if the latter is true, then it proves that he had cheated the media and the public on intention, and so he must lack the basic academic ethics and integrity.
Either way, it is fair enough to say that he is not a qualified scholar or researcher or scientist. He is nothing but a pants-on-fire liar.
If the former is true, then it proves that Mr. Yi lacks the basic mathematical skills to do scientific research; if the latter is true, then it proves that he had cheated the media and the public on intention, and so he must lack the basic academic ethics and integrity.
Either way, it is fair enough to say that he is not a qualified scholar or researcher or scientist. He is nothing but a pants-on-fire liar.
After I revealed Fuxian Yi's lie, most domestic and international media and their
journalists and editors just remained silent, some of them
stealthily deleted the articles quoting Yi’s data on their websites, but none of them, including those from NYT and Global Times, questioned or criticized Mr. Yi.
They just
pretended that nothing had happened.
And Fuxian Yi? Well, he is still hailed as a hero and scientist who partly ‘liberated’ the Chinese people from the evil Family Plan policy, although many Chinese women are forced to reproduce more babies by their in-laws, relatives and neighbors now. Comparing to the Family Planning Commission, these people work far more effectively in enforcing their willing upon women.
And they do everything 'legally'. If they troubled a woman with their endless persuasions, they just practice their freedom of speech, and it's legal; if the woman rejected their persuasions and refused to reproduce more children, then her husband could conveniently divorce her, and this is legal too, of course.
And Fuxian Yi? Well, he is still hailed as a hero and scientist who partly ‘liberated’ the Chinese people from the evil Family Plan policy, although many Chinese women are forced to reproduce more babies by their in-laws, relatives and neighbors now. Comparing to the Family Planning Commission, these people work far more effectively in enforcing their willing upon women.
And they do everything 'legally'. If they troubled a woman with their endless persuasions, they just practice their freedom of speech, and it's legal; if the woman rejected their persuasions and refused to reproduce more children, then her husband could conveniently divorce her, and this is legal too, of course.
Besides,
Chinese Economy Report, a magazine controlled by Development Research Centre (DRC) of
the Chinese State Council , has just published another article full of such
unreliable data by Mr. Yi in October 2017 and , just around the time when an
important CCP meeting was hold in Beijing. And his Big Country with Empty Nest was published by China Development Press, which is also controlled by DRC. This shows that he has been backed
by some of the most powerful leaders of China.
Maybe
that explains why no media dares to reveal Mr. Yi’s lies.
But that's only half of the story. The another half is, as an active leader in the anti-Family-Plan propaganda, Fuxian Yi was and is regarded as being politically correct and has been trusted by many intellectuals and journalists in and abroad China.
Even after his lies were exposed, such people are reluctant to admit that Yi is a liar.
Another reason Yi could fool the journalists across the world so easily is that, he wrote most of his articles and book(s) in Chinese language, and most of the journalists from Western countries don't understand Chinese.
So it raises one more question: as the 'senior scientist' of Wisconsin University, Yi should be qualified with competent language skills in English, why shouldn't he write the articles and book(s) about his so-called 'demography research' in English, so that he could share his 'thinking' more easily with his admirers across the world, or even publish them through the most respected academic journals?
In my opinion, that concerns the core secret of his success as one of the leaders of anti-Family-Plan propaganda. Because if he dares to say any lies and show any prejudices against women (*1) in English language, his admirers who could read English would soon abandon him.
And as we all know, the academic journals in West take truth, logic and science as their most treasured standards in estimating the articles submitted to them. Yi's writings, which are mainly made up with imagined facts and conjured data, surely could not meet such requirements.
But in China, the situations in such publishing areas are quite different. Some academic journals could accept articles which are not so qualified as 'academic' if the authors pay them money. While some of the newspapers and popular magazines are willing to publish articles even less qualified, if the author is famous or influential enough.
I don't know whether Mr. Yi is a qualified 'scientist' in obstetrics and gynecology he majors in. But obviously he is an expert in taking advantage of such different publishing standards between China and the West countries, especially USA.
In a way, Fuxian Yi's cheating is a kind of 'intellectual assault' aiming at media and their journalists, and ultimately, at the public and policy-makers.
Coincidentally, just like sexual assault, the victims of such 'intellectual assault' prefer remaining silence to revealing or reporting the offender.
It's easy to guess the causes behind such silence. The media and their journalists are afraid of admitting their foolishness, their failure to testify the credibility of Yi's so-called 'research', and their fault in spreading his lies.
But, just like sexual assault, their silence could only lead to more assaults and more victims.
According to Yi's own tweets, here are the most recent victims of his 'intellectual assaults', :
1. National Public Radio, which called Yi as a 'population expert', and be called by Yi as 'the most trust-worthy news resource in USA'. Well, most probably both of them were wrong, at least in this case.
2. South China Morning Post. Since their boss Jack Ma is also the owner of the e-commerce website Alibaba.com which is notorious for selling counterfeit items, maybe it's only too natural for it to sell fake news.
3. DW News. According to Yi's own saying, he had wished that Finantial Times could publish this article (which is also full of imagined facts and conjured data) but was rejected. Well, perhaps I am the one who was responsible for his setback this time. I had criticized and warned FT and its journalist of Yi's lies after they published another edition of this news titled 'India may be more populous than China, research suggests'. And guess what I got as reward for this unwelcome and ungrateful advice: FT blocked me from visiting both the English and Chinese editions of their news, until I made some complaints after their tweets! It seems that they are really good at such 'in China do as Chinese do' things.
4. France Europe 1. Well, what could I say. Maybe it should re-named as 'France Europe 1 Fake News'
5. Diário de Notícias. Yi said it was the 'newspaper with considerable influence in Portugal'. With a circulation of 19,000 in 2017, you could estimate how influential it is.
6. Ouest France. It is 'by far the most read francophone newspaper in the world' according to wiki. But what the use of it if you spread such fake news?
7 RFA Chinese. In the news "Russian Media: China Faked Data & Its Population Is Not 1.5 Billion"(《俄媒：中国数据造假 人口并非15亿》) , the journalist Xinyu Liu cited an article titled 'China Faked Population Data'(中国进行人口数据欺骗) from a Russian website “Pikabu”.
Liu also mentioned another unreliable article by Fuxian Yi at the end of this 'news'.
I suspected there was something wrong in this news. So I searched “Pikabu” and the Russian words 'Китай' (China) and 'Население' (population) and even '1,4 (or 1,5) миллиарда' on google. But the only thing I found was 2 articles with relevant contents but different titles: Численность населения в Китае превысила 1,4 миллиарда человек and Бред и мысли по поводу Китая.
I asked and kept asking RFA Chinese after their tweets: which article was the one they had mentioned in their 'news' ?
And you guess what. Now I'm banned or silenced or muted by twitter. Only I myself could see my reply to others. That's so similar to things happened on WeChat. Maybe both Twitter and RFA Chinese have infected the CCP Virus.
None of these media, from the New York Times to the Global Times, and the 7 new victims (or admirers) of Fuxian Yi's intellectual assault, admitted or apologized for spreading Fuxian Yi's lies, so far.
They didn't say #MeToo.
And the list of victims would become longer and longer if they continue to remain silent.
-------------
Notes:
*1 A Chinese feminist activist Sipan Li (李思磐） has written some articles about this issue, such as 'Why I protested on the lecture of Fuxian Yi in Zhongshan University' (“我为什么要在《大国空巢》作者易富贤的中大讲座上搅局？”), which describes Yi's 'theory' as 'demogrphic /genesiologic analysis full of gender prejudices'（“充满性别偏见的人口/生殖分析”）.
In her another review 'Why don't mainland Chinese liberalists support feminism'（《中国大陆的自由主义者为何不支持女权主义》）, she criticized such tendency among the so-called liberalists in China and pointed out that they 'directly introduced anti-abortion issue from the USA, and attempt to interfere with the women's freedom of decision with the name of "the human rights of the fetuses."'（“直接從美國引進了反墮胎議題，企圖以胎兒人權的名義，干涉婦女的自由選擇權。”）
------------
Further reading with more details in Chinese:
《“失独家庭上千万”是个低级错误》
《谁给了易富贤造假的贼胆》
《害死马茸茸的幕后真凶是谁？》
《建议“智谷趋势”更名为“愚人谷”》
《庞大的人口基数是形成“三千万光棍”的另一个主因》
《反节育派弥天大谎之二：独生子女家庭教育差》
《RFA和“安邦”咨询已沦为共匪私生子？》
But that's only half of the story. The another half is, as an active leader in the anti-Family-Plan propaganda, Fuxian Yi was and is regarded as being politically correct and has been trusted by many intellectuals and journalists in and abroad China.
Even after his lies were exposed, such people are reluctant to admit that Yi is a liar.
Another reason Yi could fool the journalists across the world so easily is that, he wrote most of his articles and book(s) in Chinese language, and most of the journalists from Western countries don't understand Chinese.
So it raises one more question: as the 'senior scientist' of Wisconsin University, Yi should be qualified with competent language skills in English, why shouldn't he write the articles and book(s) about his so-called 'demography research' in English, so that he could share his 'thinking' more easily with his admirers across the world, or even publish them through the most respected academic journals?
In my opinion, that concerns the core secret of his success as one of the leaders of anti-Family-Plan propaganda. Because if he dares to say any lies and show any prejudices against women (*1) in English language, his admirers who could read English would soon abandon him.
And as we all know, the academic journals in West take truth, logic and science as their most treasured standards in estimating the articles submitted to them. Yi's writings, which are mainly made up with imagined facts and conjured data, surely could not meet such requirements.
But in China, the situations in such publishing areas are quite different. Some academic journals could accept articles which are not so qualified as 'academic' if the authors pay them money. While some of the newspapers and popular magazines are willing to publish articles even less qualified, if the author is famous or influential enough.
I don't know whether Mr. Yi is a qualified 'scientist' in obstetrics and gynecology he majors in. But obviously he is an expert in taking advantage of such different publishing standards between China and the West countries, especially USA.
In a way, Fuxian Yi's cheating is a kind of 'intellectual assault' aiming at media and their journalists, and ultimately, at the public and policy-makers.
Coincidentally, just like sexual assault, the victims of such 'intellectual assault' prefer remaining silence to revealing or reporting the offender.
It's easy to guess the causes behind such silence. The media and their journalists are afraid of admitting their foolishness, their failure to testify the credibility of Yi's so-called 'research', and their fault in spreading his lies.
But, just like sexual assault, their silence could only lead to more assaults and more victims.
According to Yi's own tweets, here are the most recent victims of his 'intellectual assaults', :
1. National Public Radio, which called Yi as a 'population expert', and be called by Yi as 'the most trust-worthy news resource in USA'. Well, most probably both of them were wrong, at least in this case.
2. South China Morning Post. Since their boss Jack Ma is also the owner of the e-commerce website Alibaba.com which is notorious for selling counterfeit items, maybe it's only too natural for it to sell fake news.
7 RFA Chinese. In the news "Russian Media: China Faked Data & Its Population Is Not 1.5 Billion"(《俄媒：中国数据造假 人口并非15亿》) , the journalist Xinyu Liu cited an article titled 'China Faked Population Data'(中国进行人口数据欺骗) from a Russian website “Pikabu”.
Liu also mentioned another unreliable article by Fuxian Yi at the end of this 'news'.
I suspected there was something wrong in this news. So I searched “Pikabu” and the Russian words 'Китай' (China) and 'Население' (population) and even '1,4 (or 1,5) миллиарда' on google. But the only thing I found was 2 articles with relevant contents but different titles: Численность населения в Китае превысила 1,4 миллиарда человек and Бред и мысли по поводу Китая.
I asked and kept asking RFA Chinese after their tweets: which article was the one they had mentioned in their 'news' ?
And you guess what. Now I'm banned or silenced or muted by twitter. Only I myself could see my reply to others. That's so similar to things happened on WeChat. Maybe both Twitter and RFA Chinese have infected the CCP Virus.
None of these media, from the New York Times to the Global Times, and the 7 new victims (or admirers) of Fuxian Yi's intellectual assault, admitted or apologized for spreading Fuxian Yi's lies, so far.
They didn't say #MeToo.
And the list of victims would become longer and longer if they continue to remain silent.
-------------
Notes:
*1 A Chinese feminist activist Sipan Li (李思磐） has written some articles about this issue, such as 'Why I protested on the lecture of Fuxian Yi in Zhongshan University' (“我为什么要在《大国空巢》作者易富贤的中大讲座上搅局？”), which describes Yi's 'theory' as 'demogrphic /genesiologic analysis full of gender prejudices'（“充满性别偏见的人口/生殖分析”）.
In her another review 'Why don't mainland Chinese liberalists support feminism'（《中国大陆的自由主义者为何不支持女权主义》）, she criticized such tendency among the so-called liberalists in China and pointed out that they 'directly introduced anti-abortion issue from the USA, and attempt to interfere with the women's freedom of decision with the name of "the human rights of the fetuses."'（“直接從美國引進了反墮胎議題，企圖以胎兒人權的名義，干涉婦女的自由選擇權。”）
------------
Further reading with more details in Chinese:
《“失独家庭上千万”是个低级错误》
《谁给了易富贤造假的贼胆》
《害死马茸茸的幕后真凶是谁？》
《建议“智谷趋势”更名为“愚人谷”》
《庞大的人口基数是形成“三千万光棍”的另一个主因》
《反节育派弥天大谎之二：独生子女家庭教育差》
《RFA和“安邦”咨询已沦为共匪私生子？》
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