CHINA POPULATION GROWTH SLOWS - SURVEY
Nando Times.
(undated)
BEIJING - China, the world's most populous nation, said on Wednesday a survey showed that its population growth had slowed during the past five years.China's strict one-couple, one-child family planning policy resulted in average growth in its population of 1.21 percent a year, or a total incease of 74.1 million people from 1991 to the end of 1995, the State Statistics Bureau quoted the survey as saying. The annual rate of increase was down 0.34 percentage points compared with the 1986-1990 period.
China's population hit 1.2 billion in February 1995, a target the government had hoped to delay until the year 2000. Officials have set a new goal of limiting the population to 1.3 billion at the turn of the century. China, accused of using forced abortions and sterilisations to controlits population, has defended its strict family planning policy by saying it must feed 22 percent of the world's population on just sevenpercent of its arable land. Beijing introduced its tough policy in the late 1970s as its population raced towards the one-billion mark after two decades of promotion of big families under Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who believed a large population would make China strong. The survey interviewed 12.6 million people nationwide, or 1.04 percent of the population, last October, the bureau said. About 20.6 million people were born in 1995, down by 470,000 compared with 1994, while 7.92 million died, up by 180,000.
The bureau said 51.03 percent of the population were men. Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China, made up 91.02 percent of the population in 1995, slipping from 91.96 percent in 1990. Minority ethnic groups include Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs.
Urban residents accounted for 28.85 percent of the population in 1995, up from 26.23 percent in 1990. Illiterates and semi-illiterates in 1995 made up 12.01 percent of the total population, down from 15.88 percent in 1990, the bureau said.
[All so see OpEd by Yuri on this issue.]