I’ve seen some discussion about China’s population here, including the topic of ‘missing’ people, empty cities etc. This video has a click bait title, it rambles on…pretty interesting coverage of multiple topics. At the 2hr44 min point the Chinese expat being interviewed goes through several estimating techniques to guess what the correct population of China is today (based on birthrates primarily). And she discusses deaths from CV19 in China being over 100M people.
Perhaps of interest.
Chinese Defector: 1 Billion People Have Gone Missing in China | Lei’s Real Talk