Historical population

During 1960–2015, the population grew to nearly 1.4 billion. Under Mao Zedong, China nearly doubled in population from 540 million in 1949 to 969 million in 1979. This growth slowed because of the one-child policy instituted in 1979.^[13] The 2022 data shows a declining population for the first time since 1961.^[14]

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Censuses in China

The People's Republic of China conducted censuses in 1953, 1964, 1982, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. 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.^[15] Various international organizations eagerly assisted the Chinese in conducting the 1982 census, including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, which donated US$100.0 million between 1980 and 1989 for a variety of projects, one of which being the 1982 census.^[16]

China was the world's most populous nation for many centuries,^{[citation needed]} until being surpassed by India in 2023.^[17] When China took its first post-1949 census in 1953, the population stood at 583 million; by the fifth census in 2000, the population had more than doubled, reaching 1.2 billion.

By the sixth census in 2020, the total population had reached to 1,419,933,142, with the mainland having 1,411,778,724, Hong Kong having 7,474,200, and Macau having 683,218. However, this number is disputed by obstetrics researcher Yi Fuxian, who argues that data related to population growth is inflated by local governments to obtain financial subsidies from the central government.^[18]

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 Forward, 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.^{[citation needed]}

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. Through this policy, the rate of increasing population was tempered after the penalties were made. 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% 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 abortions, 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[21]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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 2000 the population 60 years and older (the retirement age is 60 in urban areas) would number 127 million, or 10.1% of the total population; the projection for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4%. According to projections based on the 1982 census, if the one-child policy were maintained to the year 2000, 25% of China's population would be age 65 or older by 2040. In 2050, the number of people over 60 is expected to increase to 430 million.^[22] Even though China has already opened two-child policy since 2016, data shows that the second-child policy cannot stop the problem of an aging population. China needs to find an appropriate birth policy to optimize the demographic dividend, which refers to the proportion of labor-age population.^[23] On the other hand, the higher house prices squeeze the marriage in China. The house price plays an important role on the influence of marriage and fertility. The increasing house price leads to the lower marriage rate and cause the other serious social problems in China.^[24]

In 2024, researchers from Victoria University and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences forecast that China's population will fall to approximately 525 million by 2100 at current rates.^[25] This revision, reducing the population estimate to 525 million from a previous forecast of 597 million by 2100, indicates a sharper decline than previously anticipated.^[25]

Population density and distribution

This section does not cite any sources. (September 2019)

China is the second most populous country in the world and its national population density (137/km²) is very similar to those of countries like Denmark (excluding Greenland) or the Czech Republic. However, the overall population density of China conceals major regional variations. In 2002, about 94% of the population lived east of the Heihe–Tengchong Line; although this eastern area comprises only 43% of China's total land area, its population density, at roughly 280/km², is comparable to that of Japan.

Broadly speaking, the population was concentrated east of the Tibetan Plateau and south of the northern steppe. 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.

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 comprise 55% of the country's land area but in 1985 contained only 5.7% of its population.

Table of births and deaths 1949–2023

Total fertility rate from 1930 to 1949

Children born per woman from 1930 to 1949. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation.^[27]

Structure of the population

Population by Sex and Age Group (as of November 01, 2010). For statistical purposes, the data for China do not include those for Hong Kong and Macau. Data exclude 2.3 million servicemen, 4.65 million persons with permanent resident status difficult to define, and 0.12 per cent undercount based on the post enumeration survey:^[28]

Life expectancy

Source: UN World Population Prospects^[30]

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, mortality 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).^{[citation needed]}

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 33.4 per 1,000 to 18.2 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 the 1980s to a level over 20 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, indicate that the birth rate started to decrease again in the 1990s and reached a level of around 12 per 1,000 in recent years.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

China exhibits 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 abortions of female fetuses. It is estimated that this imbalance will rise until 2025–2030 to reach 20% then slowly decrease.^[31]

Total fertility rate

According to the 2000 census, the TFR was 1.22 (0.86 for cities, 1.08 for towns and 1.43 for villages/outposts). Beijing 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).^[32]

The 2010 census reported a TFR of 1.18 (0.88 in cities, 1.15 in townships, and 1.44 in rural areas).^[33] The five regions with the lowest fertility rates were Beijing (0.71), Shanghai (0.74), Liaoning (0.74), Heilongjiang (0.75), and Jilin (0.76). The five regions with the highest fertility rates were Guangxi (1.79), Guizhou (1.75), Xinjiang (1.53), Hainan (1.51), and Anhui (1.48).^[33]

The 2020 census reported a TFR of 1.301, with 1.118 in cities, 1.395 in townships, and 1.543 in rural areas.^[34] The shift of fertility rate recorded in 2020 census compared to that in the previous 2 censuses may not be an actual recovery, but rather due to the low quality and massive underreporting of lower-age groups in the 2000 and 2010 censuses, while the population control policy in China back then may also give families an incentive to hide their children, which is largely relieved as the policy changed in 2010s. This can be demonstrated by the much lower number of population aged 0~4 and 5~9 in the 2000 and 2010 censuses ^[35][36] when compared to the corresponding age groups in 2020.^[37]

Total fertility rate by ethnic group (2010 census): Han (1.14), Zhuang (1.59), Hui (1.48), Manchu (1.18), Uyghur (2.04), Miao (1.82), Yi (1.82), Tujia (1.74), Tibetan (1.60), Mongols (1.26).^[38]

Labor force

In 2012, for the first time, according to the National Bureau of Statistics in January 2013, the number of people theoretically able to enter the Chinese labor force (individuals aged 15 to 59), shrank slightly to 937.27 million, a decrease of 3.45 million from 2011. This trend, resulting from a demographic transition, is anticipated to continue until at least 2030.^[39] The World Factbook estimated the 2019 active labor force was 774.71 million.^[40]

Height and weight

As of 2020, the average Chinese man was 169.7 centimeters tall (5 ft 7 in) in 2019, the figures showed, and women's average height was 158 centimeters (5 ft 2.2 in). The same study showed an average Chinese man weighed 69.6 kilograms (153.4 lbs, or 11 stone 0 lbs), up 3.4 kilograms (7.5 lbs) over 10 years, while women were 1.7 kilograms (3.8 pounds) heavier on average at 59 kilograms (130.1 pounds, or 9 stone 4.1 lbs). They were up 1.2 centimeters (0.47  in) and 0.8 centimeters (0.31 in) respectively from 5 years earlier.^[41]

Gender balance

Future challenges for China will be the gender disparity. According to the 2020 census, males account for 51.24% of China's 1.41 billion people, while females made up 48.76% of the total. The sex ratio (the number of males for each female in a population) at birth was 118.06 boys to every 100 girls (54.14%) in 2010, higher than the 116.86 (53.89%) of 2000, but 0.53 points lower than the ratio of 118.59 (54.25%) in 2005.^[42] In most Western countries the sex ratio at birth is around 105 boys to 100 girls (51.22%).

People from other immigration jurisdictions

The 2020 Census counted 371,380 residents from Hong Kong, 55,732 residents from Macau, 157,886 residents from Taiwan, and 845,697 residents from other locations, totaling 1,430,695 residents.^[47][48]