Greenhalgh's 2003 naming of Liang Zhongtang predates both Liang's own 2009 essay and the 2014 books Whyte, Wang & Cai actually cite — by six years and more than a decade

chinapopulation-policyone-child-policyhistoriographycitation-genealogyliang-zhongtanggreenhalghwhyte-wang-caichronology

Dating the documents in this cluster against each other directly: Greenhalgh's Population and Development Review article, which names Liang Zhongtang by name as having "openly criticized" the strict one-child solution, is dated June 2003. Liang's own CUHK essay 「一胎化」政策形成的時代背景 — the primary text four other vault notes draw on directly — is dated April 2009, nearly six years later. Whyte, Wang & Cai's 2015 article cites two of Liang's 2014 books (footnotes 15 and 22) rather than the 2009 essay (claim-whyte-wang-cai-cite-liang-2014-books-not-2009-essay); 2014 is more than a decade after Greenhalgh's 2003 naming.

This reframes, without contradicting, the "citation gap" the vault's existing note identifies: the gap is in which of Liang's own texts gets footnoted, not in how early Liang's name and role entered the English-language scholarly record at all. That earlier channel ran through Greenhalgh, independently of anything Liang had yet published in his own voice, and existed years before Whyte, Wang & Cai — or even Liang himself, in English — had a specific Liang-authored text to cite. This is a historical/chronological claim resting entirely on each document's own dated publication, clearing the sourcing floor for a date-bearing claim without needing a contested fact.