China Census Aims to Chart Shifting Population
China began tallying its population on Monday for the first time since 2000, an arduous task at best, likely to be made tougher by the need to count scores of millions of migrant workers in the nation’s big cities.
The government said it has sent more than six million census-takers out to survey 400 million households, including the shantytowns and dormitories that often house rural men who have flooded into the cities to work in factories and on construction projects.
In the five censuses since the Communist government took power in 1949, migrants were listed as living where their homes were registered instead of where they actually lived. By disregarding the hukou, as the registration regime is called, the government hopes to get its first accurate count of city dwellers.
The last major census a decade ago counted 1.265 billion mainland Chinese citizens, of which 807 million were placed in rural areas. The latest United Nations estimate two years ago projected that the population would reach 1.396 billion this year, and the organization’s 2003 estimate projected that by this year the population would be split about equally between cities and rural areas.
But analyses vary widely, and the sheer volume of migrants — 160 million is the middle ground of estimates — are a demographic wild card that could reshape perceptions of China’s population. The 2010 census is expected not only to better document the rural-to-urban migration, but to shed new light on a number of impending demographic shifts, including a rapid fall in the number of young people, a similarly sharp growth in the number of elderly and a decline in the size of the workforce.
Those and other trends may lessen some of the social and economic pressures on Chinese society, such as the furious scramble to create enough jobs for new workers. But they are likely to create others, including rising costs for social services such as pensions and changes in the structure of the economy.
Census officials said in a briefing last week that they are taking extra steps to encourage cooperation from some classes of citizens who might hide from census-takers. They include undocumented migrant laborers and families that have quietly violated a 30-year-old policy that limits many households to one child.
As an inducement to stand up and be counted, census officials are promising that the survey results will be confidential, and that families with more than one child who choose to register excess children with the government get a break on the stiff fine normally levied on violators — and let them pay on the installment plan if need be. Hukou violators will also be offered a similar deal.
Other inducements are more subtle: to avoid scaring away the vast number of families presumed to have hidden money from tax officials, the 18-question census from does not ask about income. Nor does it ask about religious preferences, a touchy topic in a nation that is officially atheist, but has a burgeoning number of worshipers in underground churches.
Most questions cover mundane topics such as people’s ages, gender, literacy, education and the size of their families and homes. One in 10 people will be asked to fill out a more detailed 45-question survey.
“It is harder to gather accurate information this time than the previous five national censuses,” Xing Zhihong, the deputy head of the Beijing census effort, said in an interview with China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper. “Not all residents are willing to reveal personal information.”
In true Chinese fashion, banners urging cooperation with census-takers — in green rather than the traditional red — have been strung across streets for weeks. Whether the lures will produce a more accurate count, however, is anyone’s guess. In a recent online poll conducted by the Internet portal sina.com, roughly a third of respondents said they were wary of cooperating with census-takers.
This census brings another landmark change in the head count: for the first time, the government is counting the rising number of foreigners in the nation, albeit via a smaller eight-question survey. The results of the census are expected to be released in April.
