China recently finished a country-wide census by announcing that its population growth had slowed and its |one-child| policy was working. But are the figures reliable?
According to the official census, China’s population (including Taiwan) is 1.26 billion. Annual population growth during the 1990s averaged 1.07 percent, down from 1.47 percent in the 1980s. There are a number of questions, however, about the accuracy of the data.
Independent estimates have put China’s population as high as 1.5 billion, and the one-child policy itself is the source of much of the dispute over the accuracy of the numbers. Since it is illegal for many couples to have more than one children, it is suspected that literally millions of people with extra children in China lie to census takers and hide their children for fear of punishment.
One negative trend the official census did confirm, however, is China’s imbalanced |sex ratio|. Thanks in large part to sex-selective abortion, there are now 117 boys born in China for every 100 girls. The international average is 106 boys for every 100 girls. A sex ratio that imbalanced is usually characteristic of a country that has a lot of immigrant workers — who tend to be largely male. China is going to wrestle with some serious social problems as those children grow up.
Source:
China’s population growth ‘slowing’. The BBC, March 28, 2001.