Demographics of mainland China
Encyclopedia
The demographics of the People's Republic of China are identified by a large population
with a relatively small youth division, which is partially a result of the People's Republic of China
's one-child policy
. The population policies implemented in China since 1979 have helped to prevent between 350 and 400 Million more births.
Today, China's population is over 1.3 billion, the largest of any country in the world. According to the 2010 census
, 91.51% of the population was of the Han nationality, and 8.49% were minorities. China's population growth rate is only 0.47%, ranking 156th in the world. China conducted its sixth national population census on November 1, 2010.
es in 1953, 1964, 1982, 1990, 2000 and 2010. In 1987 the government announced that the fourth national census would take place in 1990 and that there would be one every ten years thereafter. The 1982 census, which reported a total population of 1,008,180,738 is generally accepted as significantly more reliable, accurate, and thorough than the previous two. Various international organizations eagerly assisted the Chinese in conducting the 1982 census, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, which donated US$15.6 million for the preparation and execution of the census.
China has been the world's most populous nation for many centuries. When China took its first post-1949 census
in 1953, the population stood at 582 million; by the fifth census in 2000, the population had more than doubled, reaching 1.2 billion.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese interest in social programs through reproductive control, including eugenics, intensified. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Chinese government introduced, with varying degrees of success, a number of family planning
, or population control
, campaigns and programs. China's fast-growing population was a major policy matter for its leaders in the mid-twentieth century, so that in the early 1970s, the government implemented the stringent one-child policy
(publicly announced in 1979). Under this policy, which had different guidelines for national minorities, married couples were officially permitted only one child. As a result of the policy, China successfully achieved its goal of a more stable and much-reduced fertility rate; in 2010 women had an average of 1.54 children versus an estimated 5.4 children in 1971. Enforcement of the program, however, varied considerably from place to place, depending on the vigilance of local population control workers.
In 1982 China conducted its first population census since 1964. It was by far the most thorough and accurate census taken since 1949 and confirmed that China was a nation of more than 1 billion people, or about one-fifth of the world's population. The census provided demographers with a set of data on China's age-sex structure, fertility and mortality rates, and population density and distribution. Information was also gathered on minority ethnic groups, urban population, and marital status. For the first time since the People's Republic of China was founded, demographers had reliable information on the size and composition of the Chinese work force. The nation began preparing for the 1982 census in late 1976. Chinese census workers were sent to the United States and Japan to study modern census-taking techniques and automation. Computers were installed in every provincial-level unit except Tibet and were connected to a central processing system in the Beijing headquarters of the State Statistical Bureau. Pretests and small scale trial runs were conducted and checked for accuracy between 1980 and 1981 in twenty-four provincial-level units. Census stations were opened in rural production brigade
s and urban neighborhoods. Beginning 1 July 1982, each household sent a representative to a census station to be enumerated. The census required about a month to complete and employed approximately 5 million census takers.
The 1982 census collected data in nineteen demographic categories relating to individuals and households. The thirteen areas concerning individuals were name, relationship to head of household, sex, age, nationality, registration status, educational level, profession, occupation, status of nonworking persons, marital status, number of children born and still living, and number of births in 1981. The six items pertaining to households were type (domestic or collective), serial number, number of persons, number of births in 1981, number of deaths in 1981, and number of registered persons absent for more than one year. Information was gathered in a number of important areas for which previous data were either extremely inaccurate or simply nonexistent, including fertility, marital status, urban population, minority ethnic groups, sex composition, age distribution, and employment and unemployment.
A fundamental anomaly in the 1982 statistics was noted by some Western analysts. They pointed out that although the birth and death rates recorded by the census and those recorded through the household registration system were different, the two systems arrived at similar population totals. The discrepancies in the vital rates were the result of the underreporting of both births and deaths to the authorities under the registration system; families would not report some births because of the one-child policy and would not report some deaths so as to hold on to the rations of the deceased.
Nevertheless, the 1982 census was a watershed for both Chinese and world demographics. After an eighteen-year gap, population specialists were given a wealth of reliable, up-to-date figures on which to reconstruct past demographic patterns, measure current population conditions, and predict future population trends. For example, Chinese and foreign demographers used the 1982 census age-sex structure as the base population for forecasting and making assumptions about future fertility trends. The data on age-specific fertility
and mortality rate
s provided the necessary base-line information for making population projections. The census data also were useful for estimating future manpower
potential, consumer needs, and utility
, energy
, and health
-service requirements. The sudden abundance of demographic data helped population specialists immeasurably in their efforts to estimate world population. Previously, there had been no accurate information on these 21 percent of the Earth's inhabitants. Demographers who had been conducting research on global population without accurate data on the Chinese fifth of the world's population were particularly thankful for the 1982 breakthrough census.
, Chinese leaders again saw rapid population growth as an obstacle to development, and their interest in birth control
revived. In the early 1960s, schemes somewhat more muted than during the first campaign, emphasized the virtues of late marriage
. Birth control offices were set up in the central government and some provincial-level governments in 1964. The second campaign was particularly successful in the cities, where the birth rate was cut in half during the 1963–66 period. The upheaval of the Cultural Revolution
brought the program to a halt, however.
In 1972 and 1973 the party mobilized its resources for a nationwide birth control campaign administered by a group in the State Council
. Committees to oversee birth control activities were established at all administrative levels and in various collective enterprises. This extensive and seemingly effective network covered both the rural and the urban population. In urban areas public security headquarters included population control sections. In rural areas the country's "barefoot doctors" distributed information and contraceptives to people's commune
members. By 1973 Mao Zedong
was personally identified with the family planning movement, signifying a greater leadership commitment to controlled population growth than ever before. Yet until several years after Mao's death in 1976, the leadership was reluctant to put forth directly the rationale that population control was necessary for economic growth
and improved living standards.
Population growth targets were set for both administrative units and individual families. In the mid-1970s the maximum recommended family size was two children in cities and three or four in the country. Since 1979 the government has advocated a one-child limit for both rural and urban areas and has generally set a maximum of two children in special circumstances. As of 1986 the policy for minority nationalities was two children per couple, three in special circumstances, and no limit for ethnic groups with very small populations. The overall goal of the one-child policy was to keep the total population within 1.2 billion through the year 2000, on the premise that the Four Modernizations
program would be of little value if population growth was not brought under control.
The one-child policy was a highly ambitious population control program. Like previous programs of the 1960s and 1970s, the one-child policy employed a combination of public education, social pressure, and in some cases coercion. The one-child policy was unique, however, in that it linked reproduction with economic cost or benefit.
Under the one-child program, a sophisticated system rewarded those who observed the policy and penalized those who did not. Couples with only one child were given a "one-child certificate" entitling them to such benefits as cash bonuses, longer maternity leave, better child care, and preferential housing
assignments. In return, they were required to pledge that they would not have more children. In the countryside, there was great pressure to adhere to the one-child limit. Because the rural population accounted for approximately 60 percent of the total, the effectiveness of the one-child policy in rural areas was considered the key to the success or failure of the program as a whole.
In rural areas the day-to-day work of family planning was done by cadres at the team and brigade levels who were responsible for women's affairs and by health workers. The women's team leader made regular household visits to keep track of the status of each family under her jurisdiction and collected information on which women were using contraceptives, the methods used, and which had become pregnant. She then reported to the brigade women's leader, who documented the information and took it to a monthly meeting of the commune birth-planning committee. According to reports, ceilings or quotas had to be adhered to; to satisfy these cutoffs, unmarried young people were persuaded to postpone marriage, couples without children were advised to "wait their turn," women with unauthorized pregnancies were pressured to have abortion
s, and those who already had children were urged to use contraception
or undergo sterilization
. Couples with more than one child were exhorted to be sterilized.
The one-child policy enjoyed much greater success in urban than in rural areas. Even without state intervention, there were compelling reasons for urban couples to limit the family to a single child. Raising a child required a significant portion of family income
, and in the cities a child did not become an economic asset until he or she entered the work force at age sixteen. Couples with only one child were given preferential treatment in housing allocation. In addition, because city dwellers who were employed in state enterprises received pensions after retirement, the sex of their first child was less important to them than it was to those in rural areas.
Numerous reports surfaced of coercive measures used to achieve the desired results of the one-child policy. The alleged methods ranged from intense psychological pressure to the use of physical force, including some grisly accounts of forced abortions and infanticide. Chinese officials admitted that isolated, uncondoned abuses of the program occurred and that they condemned such acts, but they insisted that the family planning program was administered on a voluntary basis using persuasion and economic measures only. International reaction to the allegations were mixed. The UN Fund for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation
were generally supportive of China's family planning program. The United States Agency for International Development
, however, withdrew US$10 million from the Fund in March 1985 based on allegations that coercion had been used.
Observers suggested that an accurate assessment of the one-child program would not be possible until all women who came of childbearing age in the early 1980s passed their fertile years. As of 1987 the one-child program had achieved mixed results. In general, it was very successful in almost all urban areas but less successful in rural areas.
Rapid fertility reduction associated with the one-child policy has potentially negative results. For instance, in the future the elderly might not be able to rely on their children to care for them as they have in the past, leaving the state to assume the expense, which could be considerable. Based on United Nations and Chinese government statistics, it was estimated in 1987 that by the year 2000 the population 60 years and older (the retirement age is 60 in urban areas) would number 127 million, or 10.1 percent of the total population; the projection for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4 percent. According to projections based on the 1982 census, if the one-child policy were maintained to the year 2000, 25 percent of China's population would be age 65 or older by the year 2040.
Overall
While China is the most populated country in the world, its national population density (137/km2) is not very high, similar to those of Switzerland
and the Czech Republic
. The overall population density
of PRC conceals major regional variations, the western and northern part have a few million people, while China proper
has about 1.3 billion. The vast majority of China's population lives in the fertile plains of the east.
Coast and China proper
In the 11 provinces, special municipalities, and autonomous regions along the southeast coast, population density was 320.6 people per km2.
Broadly speaking, the population was concentrated in China Proper
, east of the mountains and south of the Great Wall
. The most densely populated areas included the Yangtze River Valley (of which the delta region was the most populous), Sichuan Basin
, North China Plain
, Pearl River Delta
, and the industrial area around the city of Shenyang
in the northeast.
Western areas
Population is most sparse in the mountainous, desert, and grassland regions of the northwest and southwest. In Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region, portions are completely uninhabited, and only a few sections have populations denser than ten people per km2. The Inner Mongolia
, Xinjiang
, and Tibet autonomous regions and Qinghai
and Gansu
provinces comprise 55 percent of the country's land area but in 1985 contained only 5.7 percent of its population.
Men/Women concern
Future challenges for China will be the gender disparity. According to the 2010 census, males account for 51.27 percent of China's 1.34 billion people, while females made up 48.73 percent of the total. Sex ratio(the number of males for each female in a population) at birth was 118.06 percent in 2010, higher than the 116.86 percent of 2000, but 0.53 points lower than the ratio of 118.59 percent in 2005. In most western countries the sex ratio at birth is around 105 boys to 100 girls(51.22 percent).
United Nations, 2010 est. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/p2k0data.asp :
steadily declined; it continued to decline through 1978 and remained relatively constant through 1987. One major fluctuation was reported in a computer reconstruction of China's population trends from 1953 to 1987 produced by the United States Bureau of the Census. The computer model showed that the crude death rate increased dramatically during the famine years associated with the Great Leap Forward
(1958–60).
According to Chinese government statistics, the crude birth rate followed five distinct patterns from 1949 to 1982. It remained stable from 1949 to 1954, varied widely from 1955 to 1965, experienced fluctuations between 1966 and 1969, dropped sharply in the late 1970s, and increased from 1980 to 1981. Between 1970 and 1980, the crude birth rate dropped from 36.9 per 1,000 to 17.6 per 1,000. The government attributed this dramatic decline in fertility to the wǎn xī shǎo ("晚、稀、少", or "late, long, few": later marriages, longer intervals between births, and fewer children) birth control
campaign. However, elements of socioeconomic change, such as increased employment
of women in both urban and rural areas and reduced infant mortality
(a greater percentage of surviving children would tend to reduce demand for additional children), may have played some role. The birth rate increased in both 1981 and 1982 to a level of 21 per 1,000, primarily as a result of a marked rise in marriages and first births. The rise was an indication of problems with the one-child policy of 1979. Chinese sources, however, indicated that the birth rate decreased to 17.8 in 1985 and remained relatively constant thereafter.
In urban areas, the housing shortage may have been at least partly responsible for the decreased birth rate. Also, the policy in force during most of the 1960s and the early 1970s of sending large numbers of high school graduates to the countryside deprived cities of a significant proportion of persons of childbearing age and undoubtedly had some effect on birth rates (see Cultural Revolution
(1966–76)). Primarily for economic reasons, rural birth rates tended to decline less than urban rates. The right to grow and sell agricultural products for personal profit and the lack of an old-age welfare system were incentives for rural people to produce many children, especially sons, for help in the fields and for support in old age. Because of these conditions, it is unclear to what degree education had been able to erode traditional values favoring large families.
Today, the population continues to grow. There is also a serious gender imbalance. Census data obtained in 2000 revealed that 119 boys were born for every 100 girls, and among China’s "floating population" the ratio was as high as 128:100. These situations led the government in July 2004 to ban selective abortion
s of female fetuses. It is estimated that this imbalance will rise until 2025–2030 to reach 20% then slowly decrease.
China now has an increasingly aging population; it is projected that 11.8% of the population in 2020 will be 65 years of age and older. Health care has improved dramatically in China since 1949. Major diseases such as cholera
, typhoid, and scarlet fever
have been brought under control. Life expectancy
has more than doubled, and infant mortality
has dropped significantly. On the negative side, the incidence of cancer
, cerebrovascular disease
, and heart disease
has increased to the extent that these have become the leading causes of death. Economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s fundamentally altered methods of providing health care; the collective medical care system has been gradually replaced by a more individual-oriented approach.
In Hong Kong
, the birth rate of 0.9% is lower than its death rate. Hong Kong's population increases because of immigration from the mainland and a large expatriate
population comprising about 4%. Like Hong Kong, Macau
also has a low birth rate relying on immigration to maintain its population.
had the lowest TFR at 0.67, while Guizhou
had the highest at 2.19. The Xiangyang district of Jiamusi
city (Heilongjiang
) has a TFR of 0.41, which is the lowest TFR recorded anywhere in the world in recorded history. Other extremely low TFR counties are: 0.43 in the Heping district of Tianjin city (Tianjin
), and 0.46 in the Mawei district of Fuzhou
city (Fujian
). At the other end TFR was 3.96 in Geji County (Tibet
), 4.07 in Jiali County (Tibet), and 5.47 in Baqing County (Tibet).
The 2010 census reported a TFR of 1.4.
No statistics have been included for areas currently governed by the Republic of China
(Taiwan). Unless stated otherwise, statistics refer only to mainland China
. (See Demographics of Hong Kong
and Demographics of Macau
.)
Population
Urban-rural ratio
Age structure
Population growth rate
Birth rate
Death rate
Net migration rate
Sex distribution
Sex ratio
Infant mortality rate
See Infant mortality in China
Child mortality
Life expectancy at birth
Marriage and divorce
Literacy rate
Age 5 and over can read and write:
Educational attainment
As of 2000, percentage of population age 15 and over having:
Religious affiliation
Sources:
Major cities
Only urban population stated (over 1 million people at least), as of 2005:
Households
HIV
Causes of death
Major causes of death per 100,000 population, based on 2004 urban population samples:
Income
As of 2003, the distribution of urban household income:
Working life
Quality of working life:
Access to services
Social participation
Social deviance
Annual reported arrest rate per 100,000 population (2006) for:
Material wellbeing
Urban households possessing (number per household; 2003):
Rural families possessing (number per household; 2003):
Household income and expenditure
Employment
officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han
, who constitute 91.51% of the total population in 2010. Ethnic minorities constitute 8.49% or 113.8 million of China's population in 2010. During the past decades ethnic minorities have experienced higher growth rates than the majority Han
population, because they are not under the one-child policy. Their proportion of the population in China has grown from 6.1% in 1953, to 8.04% in 1990, 8.41% in 2000 and 8.49% in 2010.
Large ethnic minorities (data according to the 2000 census) include the Zhuang (16 million, 1.28%), Manchu (10 million, 0.84%), Uyghur
(9 million, 0.78%), Hui (9 million, 0.71%), Miao
(8 million, 0.71%), Yi
(7 million, 0.61%), Tujia (5.75 million, 0.63%), Mongols (5 million, 0.46%), Tibetan
(5 million, 0.43%), Buyi (3 million, 0.23%), and Korean (2 million, 0.15%).
Neither Hong Kong nor Macau recognizes the official ethnic classifications maintained by the central government. In Macau the largest substantial ethnic groups of non-Chinese descent are the Macanese
, of mixed Chinese and Portuguese descent (Eurasia
ns), as well as migrants from the Philippines and Thailand. Overseas Filipinas working as domestic workers comprise the largest non-Han Chinese ethnic group in Hong Kong.
, 21,201 residents from Macao
, 170,283 residents from Taiwan
, and 593,832 residents from other locations, totaling 1,020,145 residents.
of Mandarin, which was traditionally the formal version of the Mandarin or Chinese language
.
Other languages and dialects include other Mandarin dialects, and Wu (Shanghainese
), Yue (Cantonese), Minbei
(Fuzhou
), Minnan
(Hokkien or Taiwanese, Teochiu), Xiang, Gan and Hakka, as well as languages of the minorities.
The seven major mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects, which are considered by some to be different languages of the Chinese language family, and by some others to be dialects of the Chinese language. Each of these dialects has many sub-dialects. Over 70% of the Han ethnic group are native speakers of the Mandarin group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China. The rest, concentrated in south and southeast China, speak one of the six other major Chinese dialects. In addition to the local dialect, nearly all also speak Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua), which pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, which inself is one of the Mandarin group of dialects, and is the language of instruction in all schools and is used for formal and official purposes.
Non-Chinese languages spoken widely by ethnic minorities include Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and other Turkic languages (in Xinjiang), Korean (in the northeast), and Vietnamese (in the southeast).
In addition to Chinese, in the special administrative regions, English is an official language of Hong Kong and Portuguese is an official language of Macau. Patuá
is a Portuguese creole spoken by a small number of Macanese
. English, though not official, is widely used in Macau. In both of the special administrative regions, the dominant spoken form of Chinese is Cantonese.
For written Chinese, the PRC officially uses simplified Chinese characters in mainland China, while traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong and Macau.
The de-facto spoken standard in Hong Kong
and Macao
is Cantonese
, although officially it is just the Chinese language
, not specifying which spoken form is standard. The written official standard in Hong Kong
and Macao
is Mandarin
in traditional Chinese characters.
On 1 January 1979, the PRC Government officially adopted the hanyu pinyin system for spelling Chinese names and places in mainland China in Roman letters. A system of romanization invented by the Chinese, pinyin has long been widely used in mainland China on street and commercial signs as well as in elementary Chinese textbooks as an aid in learning Chinese characters. Variations of pinyin also are used as the written forms of several minority languages.
Pinyin
replaced other conventional spellings in mainland China's English-language publications. The U.S. Government and United Nations
also adopted the pinyin system for all names of people and places in mainland China. For example, the capital of the PRC is spelled "Beijing" rather than "Peking".
has implemented state atheism
since 1949, which makes it difficult to ascertain data on the religious population figures. Thus making the relation between Government and religions was not smooth in the past. But in fact, the people are still holding private worship of traditional religions (Buddhism/Taoism) at home. In recent years, the Chinese government has opened up to religion, especially traditional religions such as Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism because the Government also continued to emphasize the role of religion in building a "Harmonious Society," which was a positive development with regard to the Government's respect for religious freedom.
According to the old Chinese government estimate, there were "over 100 million followers of various faiths" in China. Other estimates put about 100 million or about 8% Chinese who follow Buddhism, with the second largest religion as Taoism (no data), Islam (19 million or 1.5%) and Christianity (14 million or 1%; 4 million Roman Catholics and 10 million Protestants). According to the 1993 edition of The Atlas of Religion, the number of atheists in China is between 10 and 14 percent.
Additionally, the BBC reported in February 2007 that "a poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious", a figure that represents 300 million people. Among those surveyed, about 2/3 were "Buddhists, Taoists or worshipers of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and God of Fortune." Other religions represented significantly in that survey were Christianity (40 million) and Islam. China is also known to have small numbers of people who follow Hinduism, Dongbaism, Bon and a number of new religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism and Falun Gong). The official China Daily called the Shanghai professors' research "the country's first major survey on religious beliefs". The Chinese government have accepted these new numbers. The wide disparity among these estimates underscores the difficulty of accurately surveying the religious view of a nation of over a billion people and the lack of reliable data.
However, some surveys suggest that the cultural adherents or even outright religious adherents of Buddhism could number as high as 50% to 80% of the population, or about 660 million to over 1 billion. Some estimates for Taoism as high as 400 million or about 30% of the total population, but Adherents.com
argues that these are actually numbers for Chinese folk religion
or Chinese traditional religion, not Confucianism and Taoism themselves.
The number of adherents to these religions can be overlaid in percentage due to the fact that mostly Chinese
consider themselves both Buddhist and Taoist. However, it was difficult to estimate accurately the number of Buddhists because they did not have congregational memberships and often did not participate in public ceremonies.
The minority religions are Christianity
(between 40 million, 3%, and 54 million, 4%), Islam
(20 million, 1.5%), Hinduism
, Dongbaism, Bon and a number of new religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism and Falun Gong
).
According to the surveys of Phil Zuckerman on Adherents.com
; in 1993, 59% (over 700 million) of the Chinese population was irreligious but in the newest survey (same author) in 2005, it was only 14% (over 180 million). There are intrinsic logistical difficulties in trying to count the number of religious people anywhere, as well as difficulties peculiar to China. According to Phil Zuckerman, "low response rates," "non-random samples," and "adverse political/cultural climates" are all persistent problems in establishing accurate numbers of religious believers in a given locality. Similar difficulties arise in attempting to subdivide religious people into sects. These issues are especially pertinent in China for two reasons. First, it is a matter of current debate whether several important belief systems in China constitute "religions." As Daniel L. Overmeyer writes, in recent years there has been a "new appreciation...of the religious dimensions of Confucianism
, both in its ritual activities and in the inward search for an ultimate source of moral order". Many Chinese belief systems have concepts of a sacred and sometimes spiritual natural world yet do not always invoke a concept of personal god
(with the exception of Heaven worship
).
The constitution
affirms religious toleration subject to several important restrictions. The government places limits on religious practice outside officially recognized organizations. Only two Christian organizations, a Catholic church without ties to the Holy See
in Rome
and the "Three-Self-Patriotic" Protestant church
, are sanctioned by the PRC Government. Unauthorized churches have sprung up in many parts of the country, and unofficial religious practice is flourishing. In some regions authorities have tried to control activities of these unregistered churches. In other regions registered and unregistered groups are treated similarly by authorities, and congregates worship in both types of churches. On 20 July 1999, the Chinese authorities
banned and initiated a crackdown on Falun Gong
in mainland China
.
The Basic Law of Hong Kong protects freedom of religion
as a fundamental right. There are a large variety of religious groups in the Hong Kong: Buddhism
, Taoism
, Confucianism
, Christianity
including Catholicism
, Islam
, Hinduism
, Sikhism
and Judaism
all have a considerable number of adherents.
The Macau Basic Law
similarly recognizes freedom of religion though the Religious Freedom Ordinance requires registration of religious organizations. The major religions practiced in Macau are Buddhism and traditional beliefs with a smaller minority claiming no religious belief. A small minority of Christians, mostly Catholic, exists.
Population
A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
with a relatively small youth division, which is partially a result of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
's one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
. The population policies implemented in China since 1979 have helped to prevent between 350 and 400 Million more births.
Today, China's population is over 1.3 billion, the largest of any country in the world. According to the 2010 census
Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China
The Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China, also referred to as the 2010 Chinese Census, was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China with a zero hour of November 1, 2010....
, 91.51% of the population was of the Han nationality, and 8.49% were minorities. China's population growth rate is only 0.47%, ranking 156th in the world. China conducted its sixth national population census on November 1, 2010.
Historical population
- 2100 BC: 14,000,000
- 2 AD: 60,000,000
- 1000: 40,000,000
- 1500: 103,000,000
- 1650: 123,000,000
- 1750: 260,000,000
- 1850: 412,000,000
Censuses in the People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China conducted censusCensus
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
es in 1953, 1964, 1982, 1990, 2000 and 2010. In 1987 the government announced that the fourth national census would take place in 1990 and that there would be one every ten years thereafter. The 1982 census, which reported a total population of 1,008,180,738 is generally accepted as significantly more reliable, accurate, and thorough than the previous two. Various international organizations eagerly assisted the Chinese in conducting the 1982 census, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, which donated US$15.6 million for the preparation and execution of the census.
China has been the world's most populous nation for many centuries. When China took its first post-1949 census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
in 1953, the population stood at 582 million; by the fifth census in 2000, the population had more than doubled, reaching 1.2 billion.
| Province or autonomous region |
census 1953 | census 1964 | census 1982 | census 1990 | census 2000 | census 2010 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
| Beijing Beijing Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's... Municipality |
2,768,149 | 0.48 | 7,568,495 | 1.09 | 9,230,687 | 0.92 | 10,819,407 | 0.95 | 13,820,000 | 1.09 | 19,612,368 | 1.46 |
| Hebei Hebei ' is a province of the People's Republic of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "" , named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei... |
35,984,644 | 6.18 | 45,687,781 | 6.58 | 53,005,876 | 5.26 | 61,082,439 | 5.39 | 67,440,000 | 5.33 | 71,854,202 | 5.36 |
| Tianjin Tianjin ' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government... Municipality |
2,693,831 | 0.46 | 7,764,141 | 0.77 | 8,785,402 | 0.77 | 10,010,000 | 0.79 | 12,938,224 | 0.97 | ||
| Shanxi Shanxi ' is a province in Northern China. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" , after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period.... |
14,314,485 | 2.46 | 18,015,067 | 2.59 | 25,291,389 | 2.51 | 28,759,014 | 2.54 | 32,970,000 | 2.60 | 35,712,111 | 2.67 |
| Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation... Autonomous Region |
6,100,104 | 1.05 | 12,348,638 | 1.78 | 19,274,279 | 1.91 | 21,456,798 | 1.89 | 23,760,000 | 1.88 | 24,706,321 | 1.84 |
| Rehe (now defunct) | 5,160,822 | 0.89 | ||||||||||
| Liaoning Liaoning ' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the northeast of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "辽" , a name taken from the Liao River that flows through the province. "Níng" means "peace"... |
18,545,147 | 3.18 | 26,946,200 | 3.88 | 35,721,693 | 3.54 | 39,459,697 | 3.48 | 42,380,000 | 3.35 | 43,746,323 | 3.27 |
| Jilin Jilin Jilin , is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. Jilin borders North Korea and Russia to the east, Heilongjiang to the north, Liaoning to the south, and Inner Mongolia to the west... |
11,290,073 | 1.94 | 15,668,663 | 2.26 | 22,560,053 | 2.24 | 24,658,721 | 2.18 | 27,280,000 | 2.16 | 27,462,297 | 2.05 |
| Heilongjiang Heilongjiang For the river known in Mandarin as Heilong Jiang, see Amur River' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. "Heilongjiang" literally means Black Dragon River, which is the Chinese name for the Amur. The one-character abbreviation is 黑... |
11,897,309 | 2.04 | 20,118,271 | 2.90 | 32,665,546 | 3.24 | 35,214,873 | 3.11 | 36,890,000 | 2.91 | 38,312,224 | 2.86 |
| Shanghai Shanghai Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010... Municipality |
6,204,417 | 1.06 | 10,816,458 | 1.56 | 11,859,748 | 1.18 | 13,341,896 | 1.18 | 16,740,000 | 1.32 | 23,019,148 | 1.72 |
| Jiangsu Jiangsu ' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name... |
41,252,192 | 7.08 | 44,504,608 | 6.41 | 60,521,114 | 6.00 | 67,056,519 | 5.91 | 74,380,000 | 5.88 | 78,659,903 | 5.87 |
| Zhejiang Zhejiang Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital... |
22,865,747 | 3.92 | 28,318,573 | 4.08 | 38,884,603 | 3.86 | 41,445,930 | 3.66 | 46,770,000 | 3.69 | 54,426,891 | 4.06 |
| Anhui Anhui Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny... |
30,343,637 | 5.21 | 31,241,657 | 4.50 | 49,665,724 | 4.93 | 56,180,813 | 4.96 | 59,860,000 | 4.73 | 59,500,510 | 4.44 |
| Fujian Fujian ' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait... |
13,142,721 | 2.26 | 16,757,223 | 2.41 | 25,931,106 | 2.57 | 30,097,274 | 2.65 | 34,710,000 | 2.74 | 36,894,216 | 2.75 |
| Jiangxi Jiangxi ' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to... |
16,772,865 | 2.88 | 21,068,019 | 3.03 | 33,184,827 | 3.29 | 37,710,281 | 3.33 | 41,400,000 | 3.27 | 44,567,475 | 3.33 |
| Shandong Shandong ' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese... |
48,876,548 | 8.39 | 55,519,038 | 7.99 | 74,419,054 | 7.38 | 84,392,827 | 7.44 | 90,790,000 | 7.17 | 95,793,065 | 7.15 |
| Henan Henan Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan... |
44,214,594 | 7.59 | 50,325,511 | 7.25 | 74,422,739 | 7.38 | 85,509,535 | 7.54 | 92,560,000 | 7.31 | 94,023,567 | 7.02 |
| Hubei Hubei ' Hupeh) is a province in Central China. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Lake Dongting... |
27,789,693 | 4.77 | 33,709,344 | 4.85 | 47,804,150 | 4.74 | 53,969,210 | 4.76 | 60,280,000 | 4.76 | 57,237,740 | 4.27 |
| Hunan Hunan ' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting... |
33,226,954 | 5.70 | 37,182,286 | 5.35 | 54,008,851 | 5.36 | 60,659,754 | 5.35 | 64,440,000 | 5.09 | 65,683,722 | 4.90 |
| Guangdong Guangdong Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province... |
34,770,059 | 5.97 | 42,800,849 | 6.16 | 59,299,220 | 5.88 | 62,829,236 | 5.54 | 86,420,000 | 6.83 | 104,303,132 | 7.79 |
| Hainan Hainan Hainan is the smallest province of the People's Republic of China . Although the province comprises some two hundred islands scattered among three archipelagos off the southern coast, of its land mass is Hainan Island , from which the province takes its name... |
7,870,000 | 0.62 | 8,671,518 | 0.65 | ||||||||
| Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region | 19,560,822 | 3.36 | 20,845,017 | 3.00 | 36,420,960 | 3.61 | 42,245,765 | 3.73 | 44,890,000 | 3.55 | 46,026,629 | 3.55 |
| Sichuan Sichuan ' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu... |
62,303,999 | 10.69 | 67,956,490 | 9.78 | 99,713,310 | 9.89 | 107,218,173 | 9.46 | 83,290,000 | 6.58 | 80,418,200 | 6.00 |
| Chongqing Chongqing Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China and one of the five national central cities of China. Administratively, it is one of the PRC's four direct-controlled municipalities , and the only such municipality in inland China.The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the... Municipality |
30,900,000 | 2.44 | 28,846,170 | 2.15 | ||||||||
| Guizhou Guizhou ' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :... |
15,037,310 | 2.58 | 17,140,521 | 2.47 | 28,552,997 | 2.83 | 32,391,066 | 2.86 | 35,250,000 | 2.78 | 34,746,468 | 2.59 |
| Yunnan Yunnan Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with... |
17,472,737 | 3.00 | 20,509,525 | 2.95 | 32,553,817 | 3.23 | 36,972,610 | 3.26 | 42,880,000 | 3.39 | 45,966,239 | 3.43 |
| Tibet Tibet Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people... Autonomous Region |
1,273,969 | 0.22 | 1,251,225 | 0.18 | 1,892,393 | 0.19 | 2,196,010 | 0.19 | 2,620,000 | 0.21 | 3,002,166 | 0.22 |
| Xikang Xikang Xikang or Sikang , is a defunct province of the Republic of China , comprising most of the Kham region of traditional Tibet, where Khampas, a subgroup of the Tibetan ethnicity, live. The area is also home to a small minority of Mongol ethnicity... (now defunct) |
3,381,064 | 0.58 | ||||||||||
| Shaanxi Shaanxi ' is a province in the central part of Mainland China, and it includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qinling Mountains across the southern part of this province... |
15,881,281 | 2.73 | 20,766,915 | 2.99 | 28,904,423 | 2.87 | 32,882,403 | 2.90 | 36,050,000 | 2.85 | 37,327,378 | 2.79 |
| Gansu Gansu ' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east... |
12,928,102 | 2.22 | 12,630,569 | 1.82 | 19,569,261 | 1.94 | 22,371,141 | 1.97 | 25,620,000 | 2.02 | 25,575,254 | 1.91 |
| Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region | 3,895,578 | 0.39 | 4,655,451 | 0.41 | 5,620,000 | 0.44 | 6,301,350 | 0.47 | ||||
| Qinghai Qinghai Qinghai ; Oirat Mongolian: ; ; Salar:) is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake... |
1,676,534 | 0.29 | 2,145,604 | 0.31 | 3,895,706 | 0.39 | 4,456,946 | 0.39 | 5,180,000 | 0.41 | 5,626,722 | 0.42 |
| Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region | 4,873,608 | 0.84 | 7,270,067 | 1.05 | 13,081,681 | 1.30 | 15,155,778 | 1.34 | 19,250,000 | 1.52 | 21,813,334 | 1.63 |
| Military personnel | 4,238,210 | 3,199,100 | 2,500,000 | 2,300,000 | ||||||||
| Population with permanent residence difficult to define | 4,649,985 | |||||||||||
| Total mainland China | 582,603,417 | 694,581,759 | 1,008,175,288 | 1,133,682,501 | 1,265,830,000 | 1,339,724,852 | ||||||
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese interest in social programs through reproductive control, including eugenics, intensified. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Chinese government introduced, with varying degrees of success, a number of family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
, or population control
Population control
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population.Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including...
, campaigns and programs. China's fast-growing population was a major policy matter for its leaders in the mid-twentieth century, so that in the early 1970s, the government implemented the stringent one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
(publicly announced in 1979). Under this policy, which had different guidelines for national minorities, married couples were officially permitted only one child. As a result of the policy, China successfully achieved its goal of a more stable and much-reduced fertility rate; in 2010 women had an average of 1.54 children versus an estimated 5.4 children in 1971. Enforcement of the program, however, varied considerably from place to place, depending on the vigilance of local population control workers.
In 1982 China conducted its first population census since 1964. It was by far the most thorough and accurate census taken since 1949 and confirmed that China was a nation of more than 1 billion people, or about one-fifth of the world's population. The census provided demographers with a set of data on China's age-sex structure, fertility and mortality rates, and population density and distribution. Information was also gathered on minority ethnic groups, urban population, and marital status. For the first time since the People's Republic of China was founded, demographers had reliable information on the size and composition of the Chinese work force. The nation began preparing for the 1982 census in late 1976. Chinese census workers were sent to the United States and Japan to study modern census-taking techniques and automation. Computers were installed in every provincial-level unit except Tibet and were connected to a central processing system in the Beijing headquarters of the State Statistical Bureau. Pretests and small scale trial runs were conducted and checked for accuracy between 1980 and 1981 in twenty-four provincial-level units. Census stations were opened in rural production brigade
Production brigade
A production brigade was formerly the basic accounting and farm production unit in the people's commune system. Production teams were largely disbanded during the agricultural reforms of 1982-85. In the administrative hierarchy, the team was the lowest level, the next higher levels being the...
s and urban neighborhoods. Beginning 1 July 1982, each household sent a representative to a census station to be enumerated. The census required about a month to complete and employed approximately 5 million census takers.
The 1982 census collected data in nineteen demographic categories relating to individuals and households. The thirteen areas concerning individuals were name, relationship to head of household, sex, age, nationality, registration status, educational level, profession, occupation, status of nonworking persons, marital status, number of children born and still living, and number of births in 1981. The six items pertaining to households were type (domestic or collective), serial number, number of persons, number of births in 1981, number of deaths in 1981, and number of registered persons absent for more than one year. Information was gathered in a number of important areas for which previous data were either extremely inaccurate or simply nonexistent, including fertility, marital status, urban population, minority ethnic groups, sex composition, age distribution, and employment and unemployment.
A fundamental anomaly in the 1982 statistics was noted by some Western analysts. They pointed out that although the birth and death rates recorded by the census and those recorded through the household registration system were different, the two systems arrived at similar population totals. The discrepancies in the vital rates were the result of the underreporting of both births and deaths to the authorities under the registration system; families would not report some births because of the one-child policy and would not report some deaths so as to hold on to the rations of the deceased.
Nevertheless, the 1982 census was a watershed for both Chinese and world demographics. After an eighteen-year gap, population specialists were given a wealth of reliable, up-to-date figures on which to reconstruct past demographic patterns, measure current population conditions, and predict future population trends. For example, Chinese and foreign demographers used the 1982 census age-sex structure as the base population for forecasting and making assumptions about future fertility trends. The data on age-specific fertility
Fertility
Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...
and mortality rate
Mortality rate
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...
s provided the necessary base-line information for making population projections. The census data also were useful for estimating future manpower
Human resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
potential, consumer needs, and utility
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
, energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, and health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...
-service requirements. The sudden abundance of demographic data helped population specialists immeasurably in their efforts to estimate world population. Previously, there had been no accurate information on these 21 percent of the Earth's inhabitants. Demographers who had been conducting research on global population without accurate data on the Chinese fifth of the world's population were particularly thankful for the 1982 breakthrough census.
Population control
Initially, China's post-1949 leaders were ideologically disposed to view a large population as an asset. But the liabilities of a large, rapidly growing population soon became apparent. For one year, starting in August 1956, vigorous support was given to the Ministry of Public Health's mass birth control efforts. These efforts, however, had little impact on fertility. After the interval of the Great Leap ForwardGreat Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
, Chinese leaders again saw rapid population growth as an obstacle to development, and their interest in birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
revived. In the early 1960s, schemes somewhat more muted than during the first campaign, emphasized the virtues of late marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
. Birth control offices were set up in the central government and some provincial-level governments in 1964. The second campaign was particularly successful in the cities, where the birth rate was cut in half during the 1963–66 period. The upheaval of the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
brought the program to a halt, however.
In 1972 and 1973 the party mobilized its resources for a nationwide birth control campaign administered by a group in the State Council
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
. Committees to oversee birth control activities were established at all administrative levels and in various collective enterprises. This extensive and seemingly effective network covered both the rural and the urban population. In urban areas public security headquarters included population control sections. In rural areas the country's "barefoot doctors" distributed information and contraceptives to people's commune
People's commune
The people's commune was the highest of three administrative levels in rural areas of the People's Republic of China during the period of 1958 to 1982-85 until they were replaced by townships. Communes, the largest collective units, were divided in turn into production brigades and production teams...
members. By 1973 Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
was personally identified with the family planning movement, signifying a greater leadership commitment to controlled population growth than ever before. Yet until several years after Mao's death in 1976, the leadership was reluctant to put forth directly the rationale that population control was necessary for economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
and improved living standards.
Population growth targets were set for both administrative units and individual families. In the mid-1970s the maximum recommended family size was two children in cities and three or four in the country. Since 1979 the government has advocated a one-child limit for both rural and urban areas and has generally set a maximum of two children in special circumstances. As of 1986 the policy for minority nationalities was two children per couple, three in special circumstances, and no limit for ethnic groups with very small populations. The overall goal of the one-child policy was to keep the total population within 1.2 billion through the year 2000, on the premise that the Four Modernizations
Four Modernizations
The Four Modernizations were goals, set forth by Zhou Enlai in 1963, to strengthen the fields of agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology...
program would be of little value if population growth was not brought under control.
The one-child policy was a highly ambitious population control program. Like previous programs of the 1960s and 1970s, the one-child policy employed a combination of public education, social pressure, and in some cases coercion. The one-child policy was unique, however, in that it linked reproduction with economic cost or benefit.
Under the one-child program, a sophisticated system rewarded those who observed the policy and penalized those who did not. Couples with only one child were given a "one-child certificate" entitling them to such benefits as cash bonuses, longer maternity leave, better child care, and preferential housing
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
assignments. In return, they were required to pledge that they would not have more children. In the countryside, there was great pressure to adhere to the one-child limit. Because the rural population accounted for approximately 60 percent of the total, the effectiveness of the one-child policy in rural areas was considered the key to the success or failure of the program as a whole.
In rural areas the day-to-day work of family planning was done by cadres at the team and brigade levels who were responsible for women's affairs and by health workers. The women's team leader made regular household visits to keep track of the status of each family under her jurisdiction and collected information on which women were using contraceptives, the methods used, and which had become pregnant. She then reported to the brigade women's leader, who documented the information and took it to a monthly meeting of the commune birth-planning committee. According to reports, ceilings or quotas had to be adhered to; to satisfy these cutoffs, unmarried young people were persuaded to postpone marriage, couples without children were advised to "wait their turn," women with unauthorized pregnancies were pressured to have abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s, and those who already had children were urged to use contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
or undergo sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
. Couples with more than one child were exhorted to be sterilized.
The one-child policy enjoyed much greater success in urban than in rural areas. Even without state intervention, there were compelling reasons for urban couples to limit the family to a single child. Raising a child required a significant portion of family income
Income
Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...
, and in the cities a child did not become an economic asset until he or she entered the work force at age sixteen. Couples with only one child were given preferential treatment in housing allocation. In addition, because city dwellers who were employed in state enterprises received pensions after retirement, the sex of their first child was less important to them than it was to those in rural areas.
Numerous reports surfaced of coercive measures used to achieve the desired results of the one-child policy. The alleged methods ranged from intense psychological pressure to the use of physical force, including some grisly accounts of forced abortions and infanticide. Chinese officials admitted that isolated, uncondoned abuses of the program occurred and that they condemned such acts, but they insisted that the family planning program was administered on a voluntary basis using persuasion and economic measures only. International reaction to the allegations were mixed. The UN Fund for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation
International Planned Parenthood Federation
The International Planned Parenthood Federation is a global non-governmental organization with the broad aims of promoting sexual and reproductive health, and advocating the right of individuals to make their own choices in family planning. It was first formed in 1952 in Bombay, India, and now...
were generally supportive of China's family planning program. The United States Agency for International Development
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...
, however, withdrew US$10 million from the Fund in March 1985 based on allegations that coercion had been used.
Observers suggested that an accurate assessment of the one-child program would not be possible until all women who came of childbearing age in the early 1980s passed their fertile years. As of 1987 the one-child program had achieved mixed results. In general, it was very successful in almost all urban areas but less successful in rural areas.
Rapid fertility reduction associated with the one-child policy has potentially negative results. For instance, in the future the elderly might not be able to rely on their children to care for them as they have in the past, leaving the state to assume the expense, which could be considerable. Based on United Nations and Chinese government statistics, it was estimated in 1987 that by the year 2000 the population 60 years and older (the retirement age is 60 in urban areas) would number 127 million, or 10.1 percent of the total population; the projection for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4 percent. According to projections based on the 1982 census, if the one-child policy were maintained to the year 2000, 25 percent of China's population would be age 65 or older by the year 2040.
Population density and distribution
While China is the most populated country in the world, its national population density (137/km2) is not very high, similar to those of Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
. The overall population density
Population density
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...
of PRC conceals major regional variations, the western and northern part have a few million people, while China proper
China proper
China proper or Eighteen Provinces was a term used by Western writers on the Qing Dynasty to express a distinction between the core and frontier regions of China. There is no fixed extent for China proper, as many administrative, cultural, and linguistic shifts have occurred in Chinese history...
has about 1.3 billion. The vast majority of China's population lives in the fertile plains of the east.
Coast and China proper
In the 11 provinces, special municipalities, and autonomous regions along the southeast coast, population density was 320.6 people per km2.
Broadly speaking, the population was concentrated in China Proper
China proper
China proper or Eighteen Provinces was a term used by Western writers on the Qing Dynasty to express a distinction between the core and frontier regions of China. There is no fixed extent for China proper, as many administrative, cultural, and linguistic shifts have occurred in Chinese history...
, east of the mountains and south of the Great Wall
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
. The most densely populated areas included the Yangtze River Valley (of which the delta region was the most populous), Sichuan Basin
Sichuan basin
The Sichuan Basin is a lowland region in southwestern China. Despite its historical name, it is not only synonymous to Sichuan province, comprising its central and eastern portions as well as part of Chongqing Municipality...
, North China Plain
North China Plain
The North China Plain is based on the deposits of the Yellow River and is the largest alluvial plain of eastern Asia. The plain is bordered on the north by the Yanshan Mountains and on the west by the Taihang Mountains edge of the Shanxi plateau. To the south, it merges into the Yangtze Plain...
, Pearl River Delta
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta , Zhujiang Delta or Zhusanjiao in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea...
, and the industrial area around the city of Shenyang
Shenyang
Shenyang , or Mukden , is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Currently holding sub-provincial administrative status, the city was once known as Shengjing or Fengtianfu...
in the northeast.
Western areas
Population is most sparse in the mountainous, desert, and grassland regions of the northwest and southwest. In Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...
Autonomous Region, portions are completely uninhabited, and only a few sections have populations denser than ten people per km2. The Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...
, Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
, and Tibet autonomous regions and Qinghai
Qinghai
Qinghai ; Oirat Mongolian: ; ; Salar:) is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake...
and Gansu
Gansu
' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...
provinces comprise 55 percent of the country's land area but in 1985 contained only 5.7 percent of its population.
 |
EWLINE
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Men/Women concern
Future challenges for China will be the gender disparity. According to the 2010 census, males account for 51.27 percent of China's 1.34 billion people, while females made up 48.73 percent of the total. Sex ratio(the number of males for each female in a population) at birth was 118.06 percent in 2010, higher than the 116.86 percent of 2000, but 0.53 points lower than the ratio of 118.59 percent in 2005. In most western countries the sex ratio at birth is around 105 boys to 100 girls(51.22 percent).
Population projection
US Census Bureau, 2010 est. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/informationGateway.php :- 2020: 1,384,545,000
- 2030: 1,391,491,000
- 2040: 1,358,519,000
- 2050: 1,303,723,000
United Nations, 2010 est. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/p2k0data.asp :
- 2020: 1,387,792,000
- 2030: 1,393,076,000
- 2040: 1,360,906,000
- 2050: 1,295,604,000
- 2060: 1,211,538,000
- 2070: 1,125,903,000
- 2080: 1,048,132,000
- 2090: 984,547,000
- 2100: 941,042,000
Fertility and mortality
In 1949 crude death rates were probably higher than 30 per 1,000, and the average life expectancy was only 35 years. Beginning in the early 1950s, mortalityMortality rate
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...
steadily declined; it continued to decline through 1978 and remained relatively constant through 1987. One major fluctuation was reported in a computer reconstruction of China's population trends from 1953 to 1987 produced by the United States Bureau of the Census. The computer model showed that the crude death rate increased dramatically during the famine years associated with the Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China , reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern...
(1958–60).
According to Chinese government statistics, the crude birth rate followed five distinct patterns from 1949 to 1982. It remained stable from 1949 to 1954, varied widely from 1955 to 1965, experienced fluctuations between 1966 and 1969, dropped sharply in the late 1970s, and increased from 1980 to 1981. Between 1970 and 1980, the crude birth rate dropped from 36.9 per 1,000 to 17.6 per 1,000. The government attributed this dramatic decline in fertility to the wǎn xī shǎo ("晚、稀、少", or "late, long, few": later marriages, longer intervals between births, and fewer children) birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
campaign. However, elements of socioeconomic change, such as increased employment
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
of women in both urban and rural areas and reduced infant mortality
Infant mortality
Infant mortality is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births. Traditionally, the most common cause worldwide was dehydration from diarrhea. However, the spreading information about Oral Re-hydration Solution to mothers around the world has decreased the rate of children dying...
(a greater percentage of surviving children would tend to reduce demand for additional children), may have played some role. The birth rate increased in both 1981 and 1982 to a level of 21 per 1,000, primarily as a result of a marked rise in marriages and first births. The rise was an indication of problems with the one-child policy of 1979. Chinese sources, however, indicated that the birth rate decreased to 17.8 in 1985 and remained relatively constant thereafter.
In urban areas, the housing shortage may have been at least partly responsible for the decreased birth rate. Also, the policy in force during most of the 1960s and the early 1970s of sending large numbers of high school graduates to the countryside deprived cities of a significant proportion of persons of childbearing age and undoubtedly had some effect on birth rates (see Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
(1966–76)). Primarily for economic reasons, rural birth rates tended to decline less than urban rates. The right to grow and sell agricultural products for personal profit and the lack of an old-age welfare system were incentives for rural people to produce many children, especially sons, for help in the fields and for support in old age. Because of these conditions, it is unclear to what degree education had been able to erode traditional values favoring large families.
Today, the population continues to grow. There is also a serious gender imbalance. Census data obtained in 2000 revealed that 119 boys were born for every 100 girls, and among China’s "floating population" the ratio was as high as 128:100. These situations led the government in July 2004 to ban selective abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s of female fetuses. It is estimated that this imbalance will rise until 2025–2030 to reach 20% then slowly decrease.
China now has an increasingly aging population; it is projected that 11.8% of the population in 2020 will be 65 years of age and older. Health care has improved dramatically in China since 1949. Major diseases such as cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
, typhoid, and scarlet fever
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
have been brought under control. Life expectancy
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
has more than doubled, and infant mortality
Infant mortality
Infant mortality is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births. Traditionally, the most common cause worldwide was dehydration from diarrhea. However, the spreading information about Oral Re-hydration Solution to mothers around the world has decreased the rate of children dying...
has dropped significantly. On the negative side, the incidence of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, cerebrovascular disease
Cerebrovascular disease
Cerebrovascular disease is a group of brain dysfunctions related to disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain. Hypertension is the most important cause; it damages the blood vessel lining, endothelium, exposing the underlying collagen where platelets aggregate to initiate a repairing process...
, and heart disease
Heart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
has increased to the extent that these have become the leading causes of death. Economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s fundamentally altered methods of providing health care; the collective medical care system has been gradually replaced by a more individual-oriented approach.
In Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, the birth rate of 0.9% is lower than its death rate. Hong Kong's population increases because of immigration from the mainland and a large expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
population comprising about 4%. Like Hong Kong, Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
also has a low birth rate relying on immigration to maintain its population.
Total fertility rate
According to the 2000 census, the TFR was 1.85 (0.86 for cities, 1.08 for towns and 1.43 for villages/outposts). BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
had the lowest TFR at 0.67, while Guizhou
Guizhou
' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :...
had the highest at 2.19. The Xiangyang district of Jiamusi
Jiamusi
Jiamusi is a prefecture-level city in the province of Heilongjiang, in the People's Republic of China. Located on the riverside of the middle and lower reaches of the Songhua River, It faces Russia across the Ussuri River and the Heilongjiang River...
city (Heilongjiang
Heilongjiang
For the river known in Mandarin as Heilong Jiang, see Amur River' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. "Heilongjiang" literally means Black Dragon River, which is the Chinese name for the Amur. The one-character abbreviation is 黑...
) has a TFR of 0.41, which is the lowest TFR recorded anywhere in the world in recorded history. Other extremely low TFR counties are: 0.43 in the Heping district of Tianjin city (Tianjin
Tianjin
' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...
), and 0.46 in the Mawei district of Fuzhou
Fuzhou
Fuzhou is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic and cultural area....
city (Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
). At the other end TFR was 3.96 in Geji County (Tibet
Tibet Autonomous Region
The Tibet Autonomous Region , Tibet or Xizang for short, also called the Xizang Autonomous Region is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China , created in 1965....
), 4.07 in Jiali County (Tibet), and 5.47 in Baqing County (Tibet).
The 2010 census reported a TFR of 1.4.
CIA World Factbook
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.No statistics have been included for areas currently governed by the Republic of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
(Taiwan). Unless stated otherwise, statistics refer only to mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
. (See Demographics of Hong Kong
Demographics of Hong Kong
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Hong Kong, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
and Demographics of Macau
Demographics of Macau
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Macau, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
.)
Population
- Mainland only: 1,338,612,968 (2009)
- Hong Kong: 7,055,071 (2009)
- Macau: 559,846 (2009)
- Total: 1,346,227,885 (2009).
- Population rank: 1 (See List of countries by population.)
Urban-rural ratio
- Urban: 49.68% (2010) — 665,570,000
- Rural: 50.32% (2010) — 674,150,000
Age structure
- 0–14 years: 16.60% (2011)
- 15–64 years: 72.1% (male 495,724,889/female 469,182,087) (2009)
Population growth rate
- Population growth rate: 0.57% (2000-2010 average)
- Natural increase rate: 6.06/1,000 population (2007)
Birth rate
- Birth rate: 13.45 births/1,000 population (2007)
Death rate
- Death rate: 7 deaths/1,000 population (2007)
Net migration rate
- Net migration rate: -0.39 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2007)
Sex distribution
- Sex distribution: male 51.27%; female 48.73% (2010)
Sex ratio
- At birth: 1.133 male(s)/female (2011)
- Under 15 years: 1.17 male(s)/female (2011)
- 15–64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female (2011)
- 65 years and over: 0.93 male(s)/female (2011)
- Total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2011)
Infant mortality rate
- Total: 22.12 deaths/1,000 live births (2007)
- Male: 20.01 deaths/1,000 live births (2007)
- Female: 24.47 deaths/1,000 live births (2007)
See Infant mortality in China
Child mortality
- 415,000 children (under 16) died in China in 2006 (4.3 percent of the world total)
Life expectancy at birth
- Total population: 73.69 years (2007)
- Male:71.37 years (2007)
- Female:75.18 years (2007)
Marriage and divorce
- Marriage rate: 6.3/1,000 population (2006)
- Divorce rate: 1.0/1,000 population (2006)
Literacy rate
Age 5 and over can read and write:
- Total population: 95.92% (2010 census)
- Male: 95.1% (2000 census)
- Female: 86.5% (2000 census)
Educational attainment
As of 2000, percentage of population age 15 and over having:
- no schooling and incomplete primary: 15.6%
- completed primary: 35.7%
- some secondary: 34.0%
- complete secondary: 11.1%
- some postsecondary through advanced degree: 3.6%
Religious affiliation
- Predominantly: BuddhismBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, TaoismTaoismTaoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
, ConfucianismConfucianismConfucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, Ethnic minority religionsReligion in ChinaReligion in China has been characterized by pluralism since the beginning of Chinese history. The Chinese religions are family-oriented and do not demand the exclusive adherence of members. Some scholars doubt the use of the term "religion" in reference to Buddhism and Taoism, and suggest "cultural...
and Ancestral worshipVeneration of the deadVeneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, often family members, have a continued existence and/or possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living...
. - Others: ChristianityChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
(3% – 4%), IslamIslamIslam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
(1.5%), others. - Note: State atheismState atheismState atheism is the official "promotion of atheism" by a government, sometimes combined with active suppression of religious freedom and practice...
, but traditionally pragmatic and eclectic.
Sources:
Major cities
Only urban population stated (over 1 million people at least), as of 2005:
- ShanghaiShanghaiShanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
10,030,800 - BeijingBeijingBeijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
7,699,300 - SuzhouSuzhouSuzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...
6,521,300 - TianjinTianjin' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...
4,933,100 - GuangzhouGuangzhouGuangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
4,653,100 - WuhanWuhanWuhan is the capital of Hubei province, People's Republic of China, and is the most populous city in Central China. It lies at the east of the Jianghan Plain, and the intersection of the middle reaches of the Yangtze and Han rivers...
4,593,400 - ChongqingChongqingChongqing is a major city in Southwest China and one of the five national central cities of China. Administratively, it is one of the PRC's four direct-controlled municipalities , and the only such municipality in inland China.The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the...
4,239,700 - ShenyangShenyangShenyang , or Mukden , is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Currently holding sub-provincial administrative status, the city was once known as Shengjing or Fengtianfu...
3,995,500 - NanjingNanjing' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...
2,966,000 - HarbinHarbinHarbin ; Manchu language: , Harbin; Russian: Харби́н Kharbin ), is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, lying on the southern bank of the Songhua River...
2,735,100 - ChengduChengduChengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...
2,664,000 - Xi’an 2,657,900
- JinanJinanJinan is the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of the region from the earliest beginnings of civilisation and has evolved into a major national administrative, economic, and transportation hub...
2,346,000 - ChangchunChangchunChangchun is the capital and largest city of Jilin province, located in the northeast of the People's Republic of China, in the center of the Songliao Plain. It is administered as a sub-provincial city with a population of 7,677,089 at the 2010 census under its jurisdiction, including counties and...
2,283,800 - DalianDalianDalian is a major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning province, Northeast China. It faces Shandong to the south, the Yellow Sea to the east and the Bohai Sea to the west and south. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, Dalian is the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's...
2,181,600 - HangzhouHangzhouHangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...
2,059,800 - ShijiazhuangShijiazhuangShijiazhuang is the capital and largest city of North China's Hebei province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about south of Beijing...
1,971,000 - TaiyuanTaiyuanTaiyuan is the capital and largest city of Shanxi province in North China. At the 2010 census, it had a total population of 4,201,591 inhabitants on 6959 km² whom 3,212,500 are urban on 1,460 km². The name of the city literally means "Great Plains", referring to the location where the Fen River...
1,970,300 - QingdaoQingdao' also known in the West by its postal map spelling Tsingtao, is a major city with a population of over 8.715 million in eastern Shandong province, Eastern China. Its built up area, made of 7 urban districts plus Jimo city, is home to about 4,346,000 inhabitants in 2010.It borders Yantai to the...
1,930,200 - ZhengzhouZhengzhouZhengzhou , is the capital and largest city of Henan province in north-central China. A prefecture-level city, it also serves as the political, economic, technological, and educational centre of the province, as well as a major transportation hub for Central China...
1,770,800 - KunmingKunming' is the capital and largest city of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. It was known as Yunnan-Fou until the 1920s. A prefecture-level city, it is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of Yunnan, and is the seat of the provincial government...
1,597,800 - LanzhouLanzhouLanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. A prefecture-level city, it is a key regional transportation hub, allowing areas further west to maintain railroad connections to the eastern half of the country....
1,576,400 - Changsha 1,562,200
- XiamenXiamenXiamen , also known as Amoy , is a major city on the southeast coast of the People's Republic of China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province with an area of and population of 3.53 million...
1,532,200.
Households
- Average household size: 3.10
- Total households: 401,520,00
- Of which are family households: 340,491,197 (96.9%)
- Of which are collective households: 10,742,501 (3.1%)
HIV
- See HIV/AIDS in the People's Republic of China.
- Adult population (ages 15–49) living with HIV: 0.15% (2008)
- People living with HIV/AIDS: 100,000 (2008)
- HIV/AIDS deaths: 44,000 (2003)
Causes of death
Major causes of death per 100,000 population, based on 2004 urban population samples:
- malignant neoplasms (cancers): 119.7
- cerebrovascular disease: 88.4
- respiratory diseases: 78.1
- heart diseases: 74.1
- accidents, violence, and poisoning: 43.5
Income
As of 2003, the distribution of urban household income:
- Average per capita disposable incomeDisposable incomeDisposable income is total personal income minus personal current taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income, minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income...
by quintile: Y 9,061 [U.S.$1,398]- first quintile: Y 3,285
- second quintile: Y 5,377
- third quintile: Y 7,279
- fourth quintile: Y 9,763
- fifth quintile: Y 17,431
Working life
Quality of working life:
- Average workweek: 40 hours (1998)
- Annual rate per 100,000 workers for: (1997)
- injury or accident: 0.7
- industrial illness: 36
- death: 1.4
- Death toll from work accidents: 127,000 (2005)
- Funds for pensions and social welfare relief: Y 26,668,000,000 (2001)
Access to services
- Percentage of population having access to electricity (2000): 98.6%
- Percentage of total population with safe public water supply (2002): 83.6% (urban, rural: 94.0%, 73.0%)
- Sewage system (1999): total (urban, rural)
- households with flush apparatus 20.7% (50.0%, 4.3%)
- with pit latrines 69.3% (33.6%, 86.7%)
- with no latrine 5.3% (7.8%, 4.1%)
Social participation
- Eligible voters participating in last national election: n/a
- Population participating in voluntary work: n/a
- Trade union membership in total labor force (2005): 18%
- Practicing religious population in total affiliated population: n/a
Social deviance
Annual reported arrest rate per 100,000 population (2006) for:
- Property violation: 20.7
- Infringing personal rights: 7.2
- Disruption of social administration: 3.3
- Endangering public security: 1.010
Material wellbeing
Urban households possessing (number per household; 2003):
- bicycles: 1.4
- colour televisions: 1.3
- washing machines: 0.9
- refrigerators: 0.9
- cameras: 0.5
Rural families possessing (number per household; 2003):
- bicycles: 1.2
- colour televisions: 0.7
- washing machines: 0.2
- refrigerators: 0.1
- cameras: 0.02
Household income and expenditure
- Average household size (2005) 3.1; rural households 3.3; urban households 3.0.
- Average annual per capita disposable income of household (2005): rural households Y 3,255 (U.S.$397), urban households Y 10,493 (U.S.$1,281).
- Sources of income (2003): rural households — income from household businesses 75.7%, wages 19.1%, transfers 3.7%, other 1.5%; urban households — wages 70.7%, transfers 23.3%, business income 4.5%, other 1.5%.
- Expenditure: rural (urban) households — food 45.6% (37.1%), housing 15.9% (10.7%), education and recreation 12.1% (14.4%), transportation and communications 8.4% (11.1%), clothing 5.7% (9.8%), medicine and medical service 6.0% (7.1%), household furnishings 4.2% (6.3%).
Employment
- Population economically active (2003): total 760,800,000.
- Activity rate of total population 58.9% (participation rates: over age 15 [2001] 77.7%; female [2001] 37.8%; registered unemployed in urban areas [December 2004] 4.2%).
- Urban employed workforce (2001): 239,400,000; by sector: state enterprises 76,400,000, collectives 28,130,000, self-employment or privately run enterprises 134,870,000.
- Rural employed workforce: 490,850,000.
Ethnic groups
The People's Republic of China (PRC)People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
, who constitute 91.51% of the total population in 2010. Ethnic minorities constitute 8.49% or 113.8 million of China's population in 2010. During the past decades ethnic minorities have experienced higher growth rates than the majority Han
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
population, because they are not under the one-child policy. Their proportion of the population in China has grown from 6.1% in 1953, to 8.04% in 1990, 8.41% in 2000 and 8.49% in 2010.
Large ethnic minorities (data according to the 2000 census) include the Zhuang (16 million, 1.28%), Manchu (10 million, 0.84%), Uyghur
Uyghur people
The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...
(9 million, 0.78%), Hui (9 million, 0.71%), Miao
Hmong people
The Hmong , are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity in southern China...
(8 million, 0.71%), Yi
Yi people
The Yi or Lolo people are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Numbering 8 million, they are the seventh largest of the 55 ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China...
(7 million, 0.61%), Tujia (5.75 million, 0.63%), Mongols (5 million, 0.46%), Tibetan
Tibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group that is native to Tibet, which is mostly in the People's Republic of China. They number 5.4 million and are the 10th largest ethnic group in the country. Significant Tibetan minorities also live in India, Nepal, and Bhutan...
(5 million, 0.43%), Buyi (3 million, 0.23%), and Korean (2 million, 0.15%).
| Ethnic group |
Language family |
census 1953 | census 1964 | census 1982 | census 1990 | census 2000 | census 2010 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | ||
| Han Han Chinese Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the... |
Chinese Chinese language The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages... |
547,283,057 | 93.94 | 651,296,368 | 94.22 | 936,703,824 | 93.30 | 1,042,482,187 | 91.96 | 1,159,400,000 | 91.59 | 1,225,932,641 | 91.51 |
| Minority groups | 35,320,360 | 6.06 | 39,883,909 | 5.78 | 67,233,254 | 6.70 | 91,200,314 | 8.04 | 106,430,000 | 8.41 | 113,792,211 | 8.49 | |
| Zhuang Zhuang The Zhuang are an ethnic group of people who mostly live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. Some also live in the Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Hunan provinces... |
Tai-Kadai | 6,611,455 | 1.13 | 8,386,140 | 1.21 | 13,441,90 | 1.32 | 15,489,630 | 1.37 | 16,178,811 | 1.28 | ||
| Manchu Manchu The Manchu people or Man are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels , they came to power in China and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which... |
Manchu-Tungus | 2,418,931 | 0.42 | 2,695,675 | 0.39 | 4,299,950 | 0.43 | 9,821,180 | 0.87 | 10,682,263 | 0.84 | ||
| Hui Hui people The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's... |
Chinese Chinese language The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages... |
3,559,350 | 0.61 | 4,473,147 | 0.64 | 7,207,780 | 0.71 | 8,602,978 | 0.76 | 9,816,802 | 0.78 | ||
| Miao Miao people The Miao or ม้ง ; ) is an ethnic group recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component nations of people, which include Hmong, Hmu, A Hmao, and Kho Xiong... |
Hmong-Mien Hmong-Mien languages The Hmong–Mien, or Miao–Yao, languages are a language family of southern China and Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Hubei provinces, where its speakers have been relegated to being "hill people," while... |
2,511,339 | 0.43 | 2,782,088 | 0.40 | 5,017,260 | 0.50 | 7,398,035 | 0.65 | 8,940,116 | 0.71 | ||
| Uyghurs | Altaic | 3,640,125 | 0.62 | 3,996,311 | 0.58 | 5,917,030 | 0.59 | 7,214,431 | 0.64 | 8,399,393 | 0.66 | ||
| Tujia Tujia The Tujia , with a total population of over 8 million, is the 6th largest ethnic minority in People's Republic of China. They live in Wuling Mountains, straddling the common borders of Hunan, Hubei and Guizhou Provinces, and Chongqing Municipality.The endonym Bizika means "native dwellers"... |
Tibeto-Burman | 284,90 | 0.03 | 5,704,223 | 0.50 | 8,028,133 | 0.63 | ||||||
| Yi Yi Yi may mean:* Yi , a letter of the Ukrainian alphabet* Yi , a text editor written in Haskell* Serbia and Montenegro * Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and its sequel, Yoshi's Island DS... |
Tibeto-Burman | 3,254,269 | 0.56 | 3,380,960 | 0.49 | 5,492,330 | 0.54 | 6,572,173 | 0.58 | 7,762,286 | 0.61 | ||
| Mongols Mongols Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia... |
Mongol | 1,462,956 | 0.25 | 1,965,766 | 0.28 | 3,402,200 | 0.34 | 4,806,849 | 0.42 | 5,813,947 | 0.46 | ||
| Tibetans | Tibeto-Burman | 2,775,622 | 0.48 | 2,501,174 | 0.36 | 3,821,950 | 0.38 | 4,593,330 | 0.41 | 5,416,021 | 0.43 | ||
| Buyi | Tai-Kadai | 1,247,883 | 0.21 | 1,348,055 | 0.19 | 2,103,150 | 0.21 | 2,545,059 | 0.22 | 2,971,460 | 0.23 | ||
| Korean | Korean Korean language Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing... |
1,120,405 | 0.19 | 1,339,569 | 0.19 | 1,783,150 | 0.18 | 1,920,597 | 0.17 | 1,923,842 | 0.15 | ||
| Others | 6,718,025 | 1.15 | 7,015,024 | 1.01 | 16,244,634 | 1.61 | 16,531,829 | 1.46 | 20,496,926 | 1.62 | |||
| Total mainland China | 582,603,417 | 694,581,759 | 1,008,175,288 | 1,133,682,501 | 1,265,830,000 | 1,339,724,852 | |||||||
Neither Hong Kong nor Macau recognizes the official ethnic classifications maintained by the central government. In Macau the largest substantial ethnic groups of non-Chinese descent are the Macanese
Macanese people
The Macanese-born Portuguese people or simply the Macanese people refer to an ethnic group which originated in Macau since the 16th century, consisting mostly of people with some Portuguese ancestry.-Culture:...
, of mixed Chinese and Portuguese descent (Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
ns), as well as migrants from the Philippines and Thailand. Overseas Filipinas working as domestic workers comprise the largest non-Han Chinese ethnic group in Hong Kong.
Foreign nationals
The 2010 Census counted 234,829 residents from Hong KongHong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, 21,201 residents from Macao
Mação
Mação is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 400.0 km² and a total population of 7,763 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of eight parishes, and is located in the Santarém District....
, 170,283 residents from Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, and 593,832 residents from other locations, totaling 1,020,145 residents.
| Nationality | Residents |
|---|---|
| South Korea South Korea The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south... |
120,750 |
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
71,493 |
| Japan Japan Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south... |
66,159 |
| Myanmar Myanmar Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south.... |
39,776 |
| Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –... |
36,205 |
| Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... |
19,990 |
| France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... |
15,087 |
| India India India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... |
15,051 |
| Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
14,446 |
| Australia Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... |
13,286 |
| Other countries | 181,589 |
Languages
The official spoken standard in the People's Republic of China is Putonghua. Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialectBeijing dialect
Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....
of Mandarin, which was traditionally the formal version of the Mandarin or Chinese language
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
.
Other languages and dialects include other Mandarin dialects, and Wu (Shanghainese
Shanghainese
Shanghainese , or the Shanghai language , is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai and the surrounding region. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Shanghainese, like other Wu dialects, is largely not mutually intelligible with other Chinese varieties...
), Yue (Cantonese), Minbei
Min Bei
The Min-Bei language, or Northern Min is a collection of dialects of Min spoken in Nanping Prefecture of northwestern Fujian which, apart from Shao-Jiang Min, are mutually intelligible....
(Fuzhou
Fuzhou
Fuzhou is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic and cultural area....
), Minnan
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
(Hokkien or Taiwanese, Teochiu), Xiang, Gan and Hakka, as well as languages of the minorities.
The seven major mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects, which are considered by some to be different languages of the Chinese language family, and by some others to be dialects of the Chinese language. Each of these dialects has many sub-dialects. Over 70% of the Han ethnic group are native speakers of the Mandarin group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China. The rest, concentrated in south and southeast China, speak one of the six other major Chinese dialects. In addition to the local dialect, nearly all also speak Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua), which pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, which inself is one of the Mandarin group of dialects, and is the language of instruction in all schools and is used for formal and official purposes.
Non-Chinese languages spoken widely by ethnic minorities include Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and other Turkic languages (in Xinjiang), Korean (in the northeast), and Vietnamese (in the southeast).
In addition to Chinese, in the special administrative regions, English is an official language of Hong Kong and Portuguese is an official language of Macau. Patuá
Macanese language
Macanese or Macau Creole is a creole language derived mainly from Malay, Sinhalese, Cantonese, and Portuguese, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau...
is a Portuguese creole spoken by a small number of Macanese
Macanese people
The Macanese-born Portuguese people or simply the Macanese people refer to an ethnic group which originated in Macau since the 16th century, consisting mostly of people with some Portuguese ancestry.-Culture:...
. English, though not official, is widely used in Macau. In both of the special administrative regions, the dominant spoken form of Chinese is Cantonese.
For written Chinese, the PRC officially uses simplified Chinese characters in mainland China, while traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong and Macau.
The de-facto spoken standard in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Macao
Mação
Mação is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 400.0 km² and a total population of 7,763 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of eight parishes, and is located in the Santarém District....
is Cantonese
Cantonese
Cantonese is a dialect spoken primarily in south China.Cantonese may also refer to:* Yue Chinese, the Chinese language that includes Cantonese* Cantonese cuisine, the cuisine of Guangdong province...
, although officially it is just the Chinese language
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, not specifying which spoken form is standard. The written official standard in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Macao
Mação
Mação is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 400.0 km² and a total population of 7,763 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of eight parishes, and is located in the Santarém District....
is Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
in traditional Chinese characters.
On 1 January 1979, the PRC Government officially adopted the hanyu pinyin system for spelling Chinese names and places in mainland China in Roman letters. A system of romanization invented by the Chinese, pinyin has long been widely used in mainland China on street and commercial signs as well as in elementary Chinese textbooks as an aid in learning Chinese characters. Variations of pinyin also are used as the written forms of several minority languages.
Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
replaced other conventional spellings in mainland China's English-language publications. The U.S. Government and United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
also adopted the pinyin system for all names of people and places in mainland China. For example, the capital of the PRC is spelled "Beijing" rather than "Peking".
Religions
The Chinese governmentGovernment of the People's Republic of China
All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
has implemented state atheism
State atheism
State atheism is the official "promotion of atheism" by a government, sometimes combined with active suppression of religious freedom and practice...
since 1949, which makes it difficult to ascertain data on the religious population figures. Thus making the relation between Government and religions was not smooth in the past. But in fact, the people are still holding private worship of traditional religions (Buddhism/Taoism) at home. In recent years, the Chinese government has opened up to religion, especially traditional religions such as Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism because the Government also continued to emphasize the role of religion in building a "Harmonious Society," which was a positive development with regard to the Government's respect for religious freedom.
According to the old Chinese government estimate, there were "over 100 million followers of various faiths" in China. Other estimates put about 100 million or about 8% Chinese who follow Buddhism, with the second largest religion as Taoism (no data), Islam (19 million or 1.5%) and Christianity (14 million or 1%; 4 million Roman Catholics and 10 million Protestants). According to the 1993 edition of The Atlas of Religion, the number of atheists in China is between 10 and 14 percent.
Additionally, the BBC reported in February 2007 that "a poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious", a figure that represents 300 million people. Among those surveyed, about 2/3 were "Buddhists, Taoists or worshipers of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and God of Fortune." Other religions represented significantly in that survey were Christianity (40 million) and Islam. China is also known to have small numbers of people who follow Hinduism, Dongbaism, Bon and a number of new religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism and Falun Gong). The official China Daily called the Shanghai professors' research "the country's first major survey on religious beliefs". The Chinese government have accepted these new numbers. The wide disparity among these estimates underscores the difficulty of accurately surveying the religious view of a nation of over a billion people and the lack of reliable data.
However, some surveys suggest that the cultural adherents or even outright religious adherents of Buddhism could number as high as 50% to 80% of the population, or about 660 million to over 1 billion. Some estimates for Taoism as high as 400 million or about 30% of the total population, but Adherents.com
Adherents.com
Adherents.com is a website that aims to collect and present information about religious demographics, established in 1998. It is the largest pool of such data freely available on the internet. As of January 2010, the site contains approximately 44,000 references on over 4,300 faith groups...
argues that these are actually numbers for Chinese folk religion
Chinese folk religion
Chinese folk religion or Shenism , which is a term of considerable debate, are labels used to describe the collection of ethnic religious traditions which have been a main belief system in China and among Han Chinese ethnic groups for most of the civilization's history until today...
or Chinese traditional religion, not Confucianism and Taoism themselves.
The number of adherents to these religions can be overlaid in percentage due to the fact that mostly Chinese
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
consider themselves both Buddhist and Taoist. However, it was difficult to estimate accurately the number of Buddhists because they did not have congregational memberships and often did not participate in public ceremonies.
The minority religions are Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
(between 40 million, 3%, and 54 million, 4%), Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
(20 million, 1.5%), Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, Dongbaism, Bon and a number of new religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism and Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
).
According to the surveys of Phil Zuckerman on Adherents.com
Adherents.com
Adherents.com is a website that aims to collect and present information about religious demographics, established in 1998. It is the largest pool of such data freely available on the internet. As of January 2010, the site contains approximately 44,000 references on over 4,300 faith groups...
; in 1993, 59% (over 700 million) of the Chinese population was irreligious but in the newest survey (same author) in 2005, it was only 14% (over 180 million). There are intrinsic logistical difficulties in trying to count the number of religious people anywhere, as well as difficulties peculiar to China. According to Phil Zuckerman, "low response rates," "non-random samples," and "adverse political/cultural climates" are all persistent problems in establishing accurate numbers of religious believers in a given locality. Similar difficulties arise in attempting to subdivide religious people into sects. These issues are especially pertinent in China for two reasons. First, it is a matter of current debate whether several important belief systems in China constitute "religions." As Daniel L. Overmeyer writes, in recent years there has been a "new appreciation...of the religious dimensions of Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, both in its ritual activities and in the inward search for an ultimate source of moral order". Many Chinese belief systems have concepts of a sacred and sometimes spiritual natural world yet do not always invoke a concept of personal god
Personal God
A personal god is a deity who can be related to as a person instead of as an "impersonal force", such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being"....
(with the exception of Heaven worship
Heaven worship
Heaven worship is a Chinese religious belief that predates Taoism and Confucianism, but was later incorporated into both.The Ancient Chinese believed in a non-corporeal entity called Shangdi, an omnipotent, just, and monotheistic supreme being. Over time, Shangdi became synonymous with Tian , or...
).
The constitution
Constitution of the People's Republic of China
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the highest law within the People's Republic of China. The current version was adopted by the 5th National People's Congress on December 4, 1982 with further revisions in 1988, 1993, 1999, and 2004. Three previous state constitutions—those of...
affirms religious toleration subject to several important restrictions. The government places limits on religious practice outside officially recognized organizations. Only two Christian organizations, a Catholic church without ties to the Holy See
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and the "Three-Self-Patriotic" Protestant church
Three-Self Patriotic Movement
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement or TSPM is a state-controlled Protestant church in the People's Republic of China...
, are sanctioned by the PRC Government. Unauthorized churches have sprung up in many parts of the country, and unofficial religious practice is flourishing. In some regions authorities have tried to control activities of these unregistered churches. In other regions registered and unregistered groups are treated similarly by authorities, and congregates worship in both types of churches. On 20 July 1999, the Chinese authorities
Government of the People's Republic of China
All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
banned and initiated a crackdown on Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
in mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
.
The Basic Law of Hong Kong protects freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
as a fundamental right. There are a large variety of religious groups in the Hong Kong: Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Taoism
Taoism
Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
, Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
, Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
including Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, Sikhism
Sikhism
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded during the 15th century in the Punjab region, by Guru Nanak Dev and continued to progress with ten successive Sikh Gurus . It is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world and one of the fastest-growing...
and Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
all have a considerable number of adherents.
The Macau Basic Law
Macau Basic Law
The Basic Law of the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is the constitution of Macau, replacing the Estatuto Orgânico de Macau, which was effective since 1976, on 20 December 1999....
similarly recognizes freedom of religion though the Religious Freedom Ordinance requires registration of religious organizations. The major religions practiced in Macau are Buddhism and traditional beliefs with a smaller minority claiming no religious belief. A small minority of Christians, mostly Catholic, exists.
See also
- Metropolitan Regions of ChinaMetropolitan Regions of ChinaAccording to research by the of the People's Republic of China, ten major metropolitan regions are forming in China. Together, they constitute about one-tenth of China's land area, one-third of the country's population and one-half of the country's GDP...
- Geriatric depressionGeriatric depressionGeriatric depression is the prolonged occurrence of depression in elderly-aged people. A meta-analysis done by the found a 3.86% prevalence rate of depressed elderly in The People’s Republic of China, compared to a 12% prevalence in Western Europe. Factors for depression in Chinese elderly are...
- includes comparative studies on Chinese populations - Demography of Central AsiaDemography of Central AsiaCentral Asia is a diverse land with many ethnic groups, languages, religions and tribes. This article discusses all of the above, and includes the demographics of the nations of the five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, a group which has a...
External links
- China Population Information and Research Center (CPIRC)
- China Population Association
- National Population and Family Planning Commission
- CASS Institute of Population and Labor Economics
- China Statistical Information Net
- Office of the National Working Committee on Aging - China's State Council's vice-ministerial level institution on Aging
- China Population Welfare Foundation
- China Reproductive Health Network
- Chinese Journal of Population Science 《中国人口科学》
- Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment 中国人口·资源与环境
- China: Population by Age and Sex, 1950 - 2050; Proportion Elderly, Working Age, and Children
- China's population composition over time, 1950-2050
