The census, which showed overall population growth slowing
sharply in the decade to 2010, revealed fewer Chinese than some demographers
had expected and could spur calls for China’s tough family planning policies to
be relaxed.
China remains the world’s most populated country but the
rise of 5.8 percent was almost half the pace recorded in the last census a
decade earlier. Some experts had expected China’s population to reach 1.4
billion.
“China is for the first time crossing a historical landmark
from a country that’s dominated by people engaging in agriculture, living in
the countryside, to an urbanized society,” said Wang Feng, a demographer who is
director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing.
The mammoth task of counting China’s population required six
million workers and revealed a population that in a single decade increased by
75 million, more than the number of people in Britain.
The census showed the proportion of young Chinese shrinking
as the elderly population grows. Many demographers have said China’s choke on
family size threatens the future of the world’s fastest-growing major economy
as fewer people are left to pay and care for a graying population.
The report points to pressure for wage levels to rise as the
working-age population shrinks, a need for social safety nets to support a graying
nation and stress on urban infrastructure as rural migrants flood to cities
such as Beijing and Chongqing.
“The data from this census show that our country faces some
tensions and challenges regarding population, the economy and social
development,” Ma Jiantang, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told
a news conference.
The census also highlighted stark differences between China
and the rival emerging economy of India, which reported its own population
tally on March 31. India’s population grew three times faster than China’s over
the past decade and is far younger.
The proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger
was 16.60 percent, a fall of 6.29 percentage points from the number in the 2000
census.
Those aged 60 or older increased to 13.26 percent of the
population, up 2.93 percentage points.
Such figures could encourage the government to relax family
planning restrictions that limit nearly all urban couples to one child, while
rural families are usually allowed two, said Du Peng, a professor at the
Population and Development Studies Center at Renmin University in Beijing.
“The total population shows the general trend toward slowed
population growth and as well an older population, and in the next five years
or longer that will be an important basis for population policy,” said Du.
“The ageing of the population appears to be faster than was
expected,” he said.
Statistics chief Ma said the census vindicated the
government’s firm, sometimes harsh, family planning policies.
“These figures have shown the trend of excessively rapid
growth of China’s population has been under effective control,” Ma said.
But one economist said China’s slower population growth and
shrinking pool of migrant labor from the countryside could add to long-term
pressures driving up wages and prices.
“(Slower population growth) is starting to show in rural
labor markets and the entire economy feels the pain as this becomes a major
source of inflation,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong
Kong.
The Chinese government’s controls on family size have
brought down annual population growth to below 1 percent and the rate is
projected to start falling in coming decades.
“Top leaders should listen less to a bureaucracy that was
created to control population and has its own political agenda and mandate,”
said Wang of the Brookings Institute.
Still, President Hu Jintao said on Wednesday that China
would continue to “uphold and perfect reproductive policies (to) earnestly
stabilise a low birth rate,” Xinhua news agency reported.
Ma did not announce any policy changes, but he hinted that
the census results could lead to adjustments. China, he said, would have to “actively
respond to the new challenges in demographic development.” The report showed
that 49.7 percent of China’s population lived in urban areas by 2010, up from
36.1 percent in 2000, although the previous census used a different counting
method.
By 2010, 261.4 million Chinese were counted as “migrants,”
meaning they were residing outside of their home villages, towns or cities.
Most of them are farmers from the poor inland who have moved to cities and
coastal industrial zones to find work.
This was one of the surprises in the census data, said Wang.
“Given the rapid increase in migration in the 1990s you
would expect the migrant stream would slow down, but in fact the opposite is
happening. Think about it — one in six Chinese are on the move away from home.”
