| BASIC INFORMATION | p.2 |
| POPULATION GROWTH | p.8 |
| POPULATION DISTRIBUTION | p.12 |
| INTERNAL MIGRATION | p.14 |
| China Sticks to Population Control Policy in New Century | p.16 |
| President on Population Control, Resources and Environmental Protection | p.17 |
LITERATURE | P.19 |
China is a multinational country, with a population composed of a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups. Almost all its inhabitants are of Mongoloid stock: thus, the basic classification of the population is not so much Han ethnic as linguistic. The Han (Chinese), the largest group, (Chinese) outnumber the minority groups or minority nationalities in every province or autonomous region except Tibet and Sinkiang. The Han. therefore, form the great homogeneous mass of the Chinese people, sharing the same culture, the same traditions, and the same written language. Some 55 minority groups are spread over approximately 60 percent of the total area of the country. Where these minority groups are found in large numbers, they have been given some semblance of autonomy and self-government; autonomous regions of several types have been established on the basis of the geographical distribution of nationalities.
The government takes great credit for its treatment of these minorities, including care for their economic well-being, the raising of their living standards, the provision of educational facilities, the promotion of their national languages and cultures, and the raising of their levels of literacy, as well as for the introduction of a written language where none existed previously. In this connection it may be noted that, of the 50-odd minority languages, only 20 had written forms before the coming of the Communists; and only relatively few written languages, for example, Mongolian. Tibetan. Uighur, Kazakh, Tai, and Korean, were in everyday use. Other written languages were used chiefly for religious purposes and by a limited number of persons. Educational institutions for national minorities are a feature of many large cities, notably Peking, Wuhan, Ch'eng-tu. and Lan-chou.
Four major language families are represented in China: the Sino-Tibetan. Altaic. Indo-European, and Austro-Asiatic. The Sino-Tibetan family, both numerically and in the extent of its distribution, is the most important; within this family, Han Chinese is the most widely spoken language. Although unified by their tradition, the written characters of their language, and many cultural traits, the Han speak several mutually unintelligible dialects and display marked regional differences. By far the most important Chinese tongue is the Mandarin, or p'u-l'ung hua, meaning "ordinary language" or "common language". There are three variants of Mandarin. The first of these is the northern variant, of which the Peking dialect, or Peking hua, is typical and which is spoken to the north of the Tsinling Mountains-Huai River line: as the most widespread Chinese tongue, it has officially been adopted as the basis for a national language. The second is the western variant, also known as the Ch'eng-tu or Upper Yangtze variant; this is spoken in the Szechwan Basin and in adjoining parts of south-west China. The third is the southern variant, also known as the Nanking or Lower Yangtze variant, which is spoken in northern Kiangsu and in southern and central Anhwei Related to Mandarin are the Hunan, or Hsiang, dialect, spoken by people in central and southern Hunan, and the Kan dialect. The Hui-chou dialect, spoken in southern Anhwei, forms an enclave within the southern Mandarin area.
Less intelligible to Mandarin speakers are the dialects of the south-east coastal region, stretching from Shanghai to Canton. The. most important of these is the Wu dialect, spoken in southern Kiangsu and in Chekiang. This is followed, to the south, by the Fu-chou, or Min. dialect of northern and central Fukien and by the Amoy-Swatow dialect of southern Fukien and easternmost Kwangtung. The Hakka dialect of southernmost Kiangsi and north-eastern Kwangtung has a rather scattered pattern of distribution. Probably the best known of these southern dialects is Cantonese, which is spoken in central and western Kwangtung and in southern Kwangsi a dialect area in which a large proportion of overseas Chinese originated.
In addition to the Han, the Manchu and the Hui (Chinese Muslims) also speak Mandarin and use Chinese characters. Manchu The Hui are descendants of Chinese who adopted Islam and Hui when it penetrated into China in the 7th century. They are intermingled with the Han throughout much of the country and are distinguished as Hui only in the area of their heaviest concentration, the Hui Autonomous Region of Ningsia. Other Hui communities are organised as autonomous prefectures (tzu-chih-cfiou) in Sinkiang and as autonomous counties (tzu-chih-hsien) in Tsinghai. Hopeh. Kweichow, and Yunnan. There has been a growing tendency for the Hui to move from their scattered settlements into the area of major concentration, possibly, as firm adherents of Islam, in order to facilitate intermarriage with other Muslims.
The Manchu declare themselves to be descendants of the Manchu warriors who invaded China in the 17th century and founded the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911/12). Ancient Manchu is virtually a dead language, and the Manchu have been completely assimilated into Han Chinese culture. They are found mainly in North China and the Northeast, but they form no separate autonomous areas above the commune level. Some say the Koreans of the Northeast, who form an autonomous prefecture in eastern Kirin, cannot be assigned with certainty to any of the standard language classifications.
The Chuang-chia, or Chuang, are China's largest minority group. Most of them live in the Chuang Autonomous Region of Kwangsi. They are also represented in national autonomous areas in neighbouring Yunnan and Kwangtung. They depend mainly on the cultivation of rice for their livelihood In religion they are animists, worshiping particularly the spirits of their ancestors, The Puyi (Chung-chia) group are concentrated in southern Kweichow, where they share an autonomous prefecture with the Miao group. The T'ung group are settled in small communities in Kwangsi and Kweichow; they share with the Miao group an autonomous prefecture set up in south-east Kweichow in 1956. The Tai group are concentrated in southern Yunnan and were established in two autonomous prefectures—one whose population is related most closely to the Tai of northern Thailand and another whose Tai are related to the Shan people of Burma. The Li of Hai-nan Island form a separate group of the Chinese-Tai language branch. They share with the Miao people a district in southern Hai-nan.
Tibetans are distributed over the entire Tsinghai-Tibetan plateau. Outside Tibet, Tibetan minorities constitute autonomous prefectures and autonomous counties. There are five Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Tsinghai, two in Szechwan, and one each in Yunnan and Kansu. The Tibetans still keep their tribal characteristics, but few of them are nomadic. Though essentially farmers, they also raise livestock and, as with other tribal peoples in the Chinese far west, also hunt to supplement their food supply. The major religion of Tibet has been Tibetan Buddhism since about the 17th century; before 1959 the social and political institutions of this region were still based largely on this faith. Many of the Yi (Lolo) were concentrated in two autonomous prefectures—one in southern Szechwan and another in northern Yunnan. They raise crops and sometimes keep flocks and herds.
The Miao-Yao branch, with their major concentration in Kweichow, are distributed throughout the central south and south-western provinces and are found also in some small areas in east China. They are subdivided into many rather distinct groupings. Most of them have now lost their traditional tribal traits through the influence of the Han, and it is only their language that serves to distinguish them as tribal peoples. Two-thirds of the Miao are settled in Kweichow, where they share two autonomous prefectures with the T'ung and Puyi groups. The Yao people are concentrated in the Kwangsi-Kwangtung-Hunan border area.
In some areas of China, especially in the south-west, there are many different ethnic groups that are geographically intermixed. Because of language barriers and different economic structures, these peoples all maintain their own cultural traits and live in relative isolation from one another. In some places the Han are active in the towns and in the fertile river valleys, while the minority peoples depend for their livelihood on more primitive forms of agriculture or on grazing their livestock on hillsides and mountains. The vertical distribution of these peoples is in zones usually the higher they live, the less complex
their way of life. In former times they did not mix well with one another, but now, with highways penetrating deep into their settlements, they have better opportunities to communicate with other groups and are also enjoying better living conditions.
While the minorities of the Sino-Tibetan language family are thus concentrated in the south and south-west, the second major language family the Altaic is represented entirely by minorities in north-western and northern China. The Altaic family falls into three branches: Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus. The Turkic language branch is by far the most numerous of the three Altaic branches. The Uighur, who are Muslims, form the largest Turkic minority. They are distributed over chains of oases in the Tarim Basin and in the Dzungarian Basin of Sinkiang. They mainly depend on irrigation agriculture for a livelihood. Other Turkic minorities in Sinkiang are splinter groups of nationalities living in neighbouring nations of Central Asia, including the Kazakh and Kyrgyz. All these groups are adherents of Islam. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz are pastoral nomadic peoples, still showing traces of tribal organisation. The Kazakh live mainly in north-western and north-eastern Sinkiang as herders, retiring to their camps in the valleys when winter comes; they are established in the 1-li-ha-sa-k'o (Hi Kazakh) Autonomous Prefecture. The Kyrgyz are high-mountain pastoralists and are concentrated mainly in the westernmost part of Sinkiang.
The Mongolians, who are by nature a nomadic people are the most widely dispersed of the minority nationalities of China. Most of them are inhabitants of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Small Mongolian and Mongolian-related groups of people are scattered throughout the vast area from Sinkiang through Tsinghai and Kansu and into the provinces of the Northeast (Kirin, Heilungkiang, and Liaoning). In addition to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Mongolians are established in two autonomous prefectures in Sinkiang, a joint autonomous prefecture with Tibetans and Kazakh in Tsinghai, and several autonomous counties in the western area of the Northeast. Some of them retain their tribal divisions and are pastoralists, but large numbers of Mongolians engage in sedentary agriculture, and some of them combine the growing of crops with herding. The tribes, who are dependent upon animal husbandry, travel each year around the pastureland—grazing sheep, goats, horses, cattle, and camels—and then return to their point of departure. A few take up hunting and fur trapping in order to supplement their income. The Mongolian language consists of several dialects, but in religion it is a unifying force; most Mongolians are believers in Tibetan Buddhism. A few linguistic minorities in China belong to neither the Sino-Tibetan nor the Altaic language family. The Tajik of westernmost Sinkiang are related to the population of Tajikistan and belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The Kawa people of the China-Burma border area belong to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic family.
Historical records show that, as long ago as 800 вс, in the early years of the Chou dynasty, China was already inhabited by about 13,700,000 people. Until the last years The census of the Hsi (Western) Han dynasty, about ad 2, comparatively accurate and complete registers of population were kept, and the total population in that year was given as 59,600,000. This first Chinese census was intended mainly as a preparatory step toward the levy of a poll tax. Many members of the population, aware that a census might work to their disadvantage, managed to avoid reporting; this explains why all subsequent population figures were unreliable until 1712. In that year the Emperor declared that an increased population would not be subject to tax; population figures thereafter gradually became more accurate.
During the later years of the Pei (Northern) Sung dynasty, in the early 12th century, when China was already in the heyday of its economic and cultural development, the total population began to exceed 100,000,000. Later, uninterrupted and large-scale invasions from the north reduced the country's population. When national unification returned with the advent of the Ming dynasty, the census was at first strictly conducted. The population of China, according to a registration compiled in 1381, was quite close to the one registered in ad 2.
From the 15th century onward, the population increased steadily; this increase was interrupted by wars and natural disasters in the mid-17th century and slowed by the internal strife and foreign invasions in the century that preceded the Communist takeover in 1949. During the 18th century China enjoyed a lengthy period of peace and prosperity, characterized by continual territorial expansion and an accelerating population increase. In 1762 China had a population of more than 200,000.000. and by 1834 the population had doubled. It should be noted that during this period there was no concomitant increase in the amount of cultivable land; from this time on. land hunger became a growing problem. After 1949 sanitation and medical care greatly improved, epidemics were brought under control, and the younger generation became much healthier. Public hygiene also improved, resulting in a death rate that declined faster than the birth rate and a rate of population growth that speeded up again. Population reached 1,000.000.000 in the early 1980s.
Now China has a population of 1,295.33 million. Compared with the population of 1,133.68 million from the 1990 population census (with zero hour of July 1, 1990 as the reference time), the total population of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and the servicemen of the mainland of China increased by 132.15 million persons, or 11.66 percent over the past 10 years and 4 months. The average annual growth was 12.79 million persons, or a growth rate of 1.07 percent.
The continually growing population poses major problems for the government. Faced with difficulties in obtaining an adequate food supply and in combating the generally low standard of living, the authorities sponsored Drive a drive for birth control in 1955-58. A second attempt at for birth population control began in 1962, when advocacy of late control marriages and the use of contraceptives became prominent parts of the program. The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution interrupted this second family-planning drive, but in 1970 a third and much stricter program was initiated. This program attempted to make late marriage and family limitation obligatory, and it culminated in 1979 in efforts to implement a policy of one child per family.
Other developments affected the rate of population growth more than the first two official family-planning campaigns. For example, although family planning had been rejected by Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) in 1958, the Great Leap Forward that he initiated in that year (see below The economy) caused a massive famine that resulted in more deaths than births and a reduction of population in 1960. By 1963 recovery from the famine produced the highest rate of population increase since 1949, at more than 3 percent, although the second birth-control campaign had already begun.
Since the initiation of the third family-planning program in 1970, however, state efforts have been much more effective. China's population growth rate is now unusually low for a developing country, although the huge size of its population still results in a large annual net population growth.
Below I described the distribution of China’s population by different characteristics.
I. Sex Composition.
Of the people enumerated in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China, 653.55 million persons or 51.63 percent were males, while 612.28 million persons or 48.37 percent were females. The sex ratio (female=100) was 106.74.
II. Age Composition.
Of the people enumerated in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China, 289.79 million persons were in the age group of 0-14, accounting for 22.89 percent of the total population; 887.93 million persons in the age group of 15-64, accounting for 70.15 percent and 88.11 million persons in the age group of 65 and over, accounting for 6.96 percent. As compared with the results of the 1990 population census, the share of people in the age group of 0-14 was down by 4.80 percentage points, and that for people aged 65 and over was up by 1.39 percentage points.