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Chinese Census Finds Nation is Aging

   Stephanie Ho | Beijing  April 28, 2011
   An elderly couple hold their grandson's hands as they enter a subway
   station in People's Square, Shanghai April 28, 2011.

Photo: Reuters

   An elderly couple hold their grandson's hands as they enter a subway
   station in People's Square, Shanghai April 28, 2011.

   China's latest census shows that the country's more than 1.3 billion
   people are rapidly aging and rapidly urbanizing.
   Ma Jiantang, the head of China's National Bureau of Statistics, told
   reporters in Beijing that the number of people in China under 14 years
   old dropped more than six percentage points in 2010, compared to the
   last census in 2000. At the same time, he says the number of people
   aged 60 or older increased nearly three percentage points.
   Ma says the change is a reflection of improved living standards and
   health conditions that have come with China's rapid economic growth.
   Ma put China's overall population at 1.34 billion people. He says the
   population growth rate has nearly halved from the 2000 census, to less
   than one percent last year.
   Ma says the figures demonstrate what he called the continuous and good
   implementation of China's national family planning policy. He adds that
   it has been effective in controlling an otherwise excessively and
   rapidly growing population.
   Since 1980, the Chinese government has maintained a strict family
   planning policy that limits most urban couples to one child. Ma says
   this policy has given China what he called a "triple low model" of
   population growth - low birth rate, low death rate and low net
   population increase. He saidthis differs from other developing
   countries, many of which have higher birth rates.
   He noted that it took many developed countries as long as 100 years to
   reach the so-called triple low point, while China did so in just a few
   decades.
   The census results also show that nearly half of China's population
   live in urban areas, compared with about 36 percent in 2000.
   That represents more than 180 million people who have moved from the
   countryside to the cities in just 10 years. Most have been drawn by the
   prospect of finding factory jobs as the nation transforms itself from a
   mainly agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse.