Fake news are common across the world, but most of them are short-lived. Because the world is full of different people with different views, if a pro-Trump medium published fake news, then a pro-Biden medium may find out the truth, and vice versa. If a pro-CCP medium published fake news, then an anti-CCP medium may find out the truth, and vice versa.
However, there does exist one exception. A man fakes sensational data that quickly spread across the whole world, but none of the media dares to reveal the truth even after those informations were proved to be nothing but pants-on-fire lies. How could he successfully fool the the whole world in such a shameless way?
Back in early 2013, Global Times, a ‘Chinese tabloid known for its hawkish views’, as described by New York Times, published an information that soon became a hot news attracting the attentions of the media across the world.
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 one-child 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 Yi's reputation as a 'scientist' and "demographist", that information and his data quickly swept across the world. In China, nearly all of the major state-owned media, 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‘In China, Loss of a Child Means Orphan Parents’by Didi Kirsten Tatlow.
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.
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 was reliable.
In a paragraph of blog article in Chinese language (http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-385383-916105.html) later deleted, 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 10,000 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 5 years later, in early 2018, when I finally realized one thing: Fuxian Yi CAN NOT calculate how many people would die before the age 25 by using those 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 1998 have died before they reach age 25, except the mortality datum of them in 2000 when they were age 3, he also need those data when they were age 0, 1, 2, 4,5,...to 24.
Yi didn't and couldn't get those data, so he just faked them by simply borrowing MRs of those who were 0, 1, 2, 4,5,...to 24 in 2000.
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, another famous figure from Hunan Province and who fooled billions of people across the world as Yi does, still lived and controlled the country in his absurd and crazy way, 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, 84.75‰ Chinese babies would die before they reach age 5, as UN estimates (https://childmortality.org/data/China).
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 36.68‰ of them died whatsoever before they reached age 5.
We need another 15 years to see this data decreased to about 10.71‰, much better than those of 1975 and 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 2035.
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.
People abroad China may not realized, One-Child Policy was strictly applied to families in cities, especially those with one or both parents working in government and government-related organizations, but not in countryside. With steady income and protected by medical care system mainly limited to these groups, the MR of their children was much lower than that of families who lived in countryside and most probably had more than one child.
This means that the data Yi faked out in such ways are nothing but lies upon 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, about 644.5 thousand women older than age 35 had 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 showed about 660 thousand single-child families had suffered the same misery till 2010.
So how could the number of such families increases about 15 times to as many as 10 million after 25 years as Yi predicted? It seems that, to make his prediction become true, Yi needs a terrrible massacre targeting the single-child of China, a massacre terrible and brutal than the Halocaust which killed 6 millions Jews.
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 parents would die before their children die a natural death. And this is the mistake which WANG Guangzhou made in his edition of "10 million". He counted such familes as Shi Du Jia Ting (失独家庭）, families which lose their single-child.
Now here are the questions: Is it possible that 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 fake data?
If the former is true, then it proves that Yi lacks the basic mathematical skills to do scientific research; if the latter is true, then it proves that he had fooled 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 exposed 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 they continue to spread other lies of Fuxian Yi till now, with or without mentioning his name.
Even George Soros was fooled by Yi after he read an article 'Researcher questions China's population data, says it may be lower' by Reuters journalist Jane Lee.
Soros was fooled by Yi and Lee
Citing the fak data of Yi that China only have 1.28 billion population, Soros predicted that Xi would not be able to get his 3rd term as the chairman of China. The loyal supporters of Yi in VOA and Radio France Internationale jumped at this opportunity and spread that news to their readers as quickly as possible, though I have done fact-checks twice on Yi's such "demographic researches" and proved that his conclusion was groundless.
As media owned by U.S. government, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia both have programs on fact-checks. But of course they would never ever do any fact-checks on Yi's "demographic researches".
Recently, Peter Coy of New York Time repeated Yi's lies again in 'The Scientist Who Foresaw China’s Stagnation' and tried to shape Yi as a victim of China's cencorship on speech.
The truth is, Yi has published at least eight articles on Chinese magazines after he "angered officials in the National Health and Family Planning Commission" in 2017 as he claimed. And his famous book Big Country with an Empty Nest is still sold on e-commerce platform such JD.com.
As a scholar, if Yi's book and articles are not banned in China, there is no way he should worry about 'if authorities let him in, they would not let him out', unless he has done something else that angered certain authorities far more powerful than NHFPC and he is reluctant to tell his readers and supporters the truth.
Actually, Chinese Economy Report, a magazine controlled by Development Research Centre (DRC) of the Chinese State Council , had published another article full of unreliable data by Yi in October 2017, just around the time when an important CCP meeting was held in Beijing. Not coincidently, his Big Country with an Empty Nest was published by China Development Press, which is also controlled by DRC. These facts prove that Yi has been backed by some of the most powerful leaders of China, probably Xi himself, because to invade Taiwan, Xi needs more young soldiers, and Yi's lies of encouraging birth in China would help him in this.
Maybe that explains why no media in China dares to expose 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 supported by many intellectuals and journalists in and abroad China.
Even after his lies were exposed by me, these people have been unwilling to admit that Yi is a liar.
Another reason Yi could fool the journalists and their readers across the world so easily is that, he wrote most of his articles and book(s) on demography in Chinese language, and some of the journalists from Western countries don't understand Chinese. (The Chinese journalists and editors in VOA, RFA, RFI, The Epoch Times, NYT and BBC are not among them. They know Chinese and they also know that I have been trying to expose Yi's lies. They have been spreading his lies intentionally.)
And after they spread the lies of Yi, they become the complicities of him and they are more than willing to help him conceal the fact that he's a liar.
Yi knows very well of this. The smarter one is regarded by others, the more reluctant he or she is to admit he or she was fooled by so rediculous lies of him.
And that's another key reason why Yi, as a liar, has been so successful across the world.
(It's a simplifiied and updated edition of my old article "How could Fuxian Yi fake data and spread his lies so easily worldwide?")
