Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Shashank Joshi, filling in for Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Central bankers are hardly known as tech pioneers, yet many of them around the world are keen to launch their own digital currencies.

If done well, that might give millions of people access to bank accounts.

If done wrong, it could cripple private banks and enable government surveillance.

And you might not think roadkill is that useful, at least if you're not a vulture,

but scientists in Ecuador have found an ingenious use for animals splattered on the tarmac.

We look at the benefits of counting carcasses.

First up though.

The world's biggest country is still getting bigger, but not for much longer. Yesterday, China released the results of its latest census.

It showed that the population had grown by 5% from a decade ago to over 1.4 billion people. Yet it also revealed a sharp drop in

births last year, putting it on track to hit its peak population within the decade. That slowdown

will force the Communist Party to face

up to some serious social and economic challenges. It's a once-a-decade census. Everybody was

waiting for the results. Simon Rabinovich is our Asia economics editor. Initially, in fact,

the government had said they would be out in early April. More than a month passed, finally they released them yesterday, so everybody has been scrutinizing

the numbers both for what they say and for potentially what they're covering up.

And what did the Chinese authorities pull out of this and emphasize?

The figures were announced at a news conference by Ning Zij-e-jo, who's the head of the National

Bureau of Statistics.

From this this piece of the total of the world's the first year's

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