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Chinese
Population
A baby boy
delivered in a Beijing maternity ward Jan.6, 2005 marked that China has
reached 1.3 billionth citizen. Accordingly to the report from official
China Xinhua News Agency, China would have reached 1.3 billion citizens
four years earlier if it weren't for its family planning policy.
China credits
one-child policy with enabling the country's stable economic growth.
The government says that the policy has meant that Chinese couples who
had an average of 5.8 children in the 1970s now have average 1.8
children.
China is the most
populous country in the world, about 22 percent of the world's total
population. This figure does not include Chinese in the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, Taiwan Province and Macao Special
Administrative Region and other overseas Chinese community.
When New China was
founded in 1949, China had a population of 541,670,000. Censuses were
conducted in 1953, 1964, and 1982. The 1982 census reported a total
population of 1,008,180,738.
In the early
1970s, the Chinese government realized that the over-rapid population
growth was harmful to economic and social development, and would cause
great difficulties in the fields of employment, housing, communications
and medical care. To alleviate the tremendous pressure that the
population growth was exerting on land, forests and water resources,
Chinese government began implementing a family planning, population
control and population quality improvement policy, which was the famous "one child" per couple birth control policy.
Since then birth
rates have steadily declined year by year. China's birth rate dropped
from 34.11 per thousand in 1969 to 15.23 per thousand at the end of
1999; and the natural growth rate decreased from 26.08 per thousand to
8.77 per thousand. The change in the population reproduction type is
characterized by low-birth, low-death and low-increase rates.
The major effect
of the one-child policy has, however, been the highly skewed sex ratio.
Currently about 120 boys are born in China for every 100 girls - an
astoundingly high imbalance that will likely cause severe social shocks
and problems in the near future. Especially in urban areas where most
household prefer boy than girl to do farm work and pass along family
names, the one-child policy exacerbated this imbalance by giving urban
residents no choice but to abort female fetuses.
The
population density in China is 130 people / square km. However, the
population is distributed unevenly. At east coast there are more than
400 people / square km; in the central areas is over 200; while in the
sparsely populated plateaus of the west, there are less than 10 people
/ square km.
China's
population is not expected to continue to grow. Although
demographics mean that it will continue to grow even with very low
birth rates, China's population is expected to reach 1.46 billion
sometime in the 2030s.
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