Does China have one of the world’s highest suicide rates?
Chinese police remove an elderly man who climbed up an advertising billboard in an attempt to kill himself by jumping to the ground in Beijing on May 17, 2011.
China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention claim China has "one of the highest rates of suicide in the world," according to Agence France Presse.
Speaking to a state-run publication, a health bureau spokesman added that suicide is the biggest cause of death for Chinese aged 15 to 34, according to AFP.
A similar article in the state-run outlet Xinhua claims China's suicides are up 60 percent in the past 50 years.
But is China's suicide rate really among the world's highest?
Sort of.
China's new findings show that roughly 22 out 100,000 people kill themselves each year.
But that's still lower than the rate in Japan, Russia, Sri Lanka and many other countries, according to these stats from the World Health Organization.
What's interesting, however, is who in China commits suicide. While suicide is a largely male phenomenon in most countries, females in China are 25 percent more likely than men to commit suicide, according to Xinhua.
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