 Of the urban population, roughly 1 in 12 resided in Shanghai.China had never previously had an official national census in the modern period and estimates of its population even in 1911 varied between 200,000,000 and 400,000,000.Mistrust of PRC statistics that saw the number of cities go from 60 under the Nationalist government to 103 within four years and that involved "indirectly survey[ing]" several areas including Tibet led some Western academics like George Cressey to claim, "These inflated figures are designed to impress the world with China's strength, to support claims for a falling death rate, or to supply an excuse for food shortages."