China is the most populous country in the world,
with 1.25909 billion people at the end of 1999, about 22
percent of the world’s total. This figure does not
include many Chinese in the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region, Taiwan Province and Macao Special Administrative
Region.
The population density in China is 130
people per sq km. This population, however, is unevenly
distributed. Along the densely populated east coast there
are more than 400 people per sq km; in the central areas,
over 200; and in the sparsely populated plateaus in the west
there are less than 10 people per sq
km.
When New China was founded in
1949, China had a population of 541.67 million. Owing to
China’s stable society, rapid production development,
improvement of medical and health conditions, insufficient
awareness of the importance of population growth control and
shortage of experience, the population grew rapidly,
reaching 806.71 million in 1969. 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; and that if China
could not effectively check the over-rapid population
growth, and alleviate the tremendous pressure that the
population growth was exerting on land, forests and water
resources, the worsening of the ecology and the environment
in the coming decades would be disastrous, thus endangering
the necessary conditions for the survival of humanity, and
sustainable social and economic development. Then the
Chinese government began implementing a family planning,
population control and population quality improvement policy
in accordance with China’s basic conditions of being a
large country with a poor economic foundation, a large
population and little cultivated land, so as to promote the
coordinated development of the economy, society, resources
and environment. 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, thus basically realizing
a change in the population reproduction type to one
characterized by low-birth, low-death and low-increase rates.
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