China's population to be kept within 1.3 billion by yearend

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, December 26, 2003

China's population to be kept within 1.3 billion by yearend

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China has successfully completed its planned population work for the year 2003, with the nation's low-birth rate remaining stable, as is known from a national conference on population and family planning work held on December 25 in Beijing. According to statistics from related departments, in this year the national birth rate stands at 13.37 per thousand, and the rate of natural increase is within 7.25 per thousand. Births during this year are below 10 million, the average births given by each Chinese woman during her life is kept around 1.8. The nation's total population is expected to be controlled within 1.294 billion by this yearend.

Though the nation has reached a low-birth level, it is made unstable by the long-term coexistence of low-increase rate and high increase volume, and imbalanced development between regions is not fundamentally changed, said Zhang Weiqing, director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission. Now great gaps exist between China's central, eastern and western regions, and between rural and urban areas regarding population and family planning work. In eastern regions population growth rate has been reduced to a rather low level, with the birth rate in 2002 below 10 per thousand, and natural increase rate below 5 per thousand, and Shanghai has seen negative growth for ten successive years. While in western regions there are still six provinces whose birth rates are higher than 16 per thousand, natural increase rate higher than 10 per thousand.

China's situation of population security allows no optimism, and the conflicts between population and economy, society, resources and environment still stand out. The population work is hindered by a series of problems-grassroots work in rural areas is rather weak; management and service for migrant population are not in place; legal rights of the masses are not well protected; social security system favoring family planning needs to be improved; and the aging problem in rural areas is increasing.

To tackle with these problems, Zhang pointed out, the Commission will in 2004 focus on the task of stabilizing low-birth level and pay high attention to population security. Meanwhile, encouragement and support will be strengthened for rural households who have done a good job in family planning; management and service for migrant population will be stepped up and high attention will be paid on the high sex ratio among newborns. What worth attention is that the Commission has listed into its central tasks the study on population development strategies, and work on mapping out a medium-and-long-term population development plan has been kicked off.

(People's Daily, the 11th page, December 26)

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