China: World’s Biggest Census Begins

It happens every ten years in China. On Monday morning six million census workers set out from major cities and fanned out across the country. Their mission is to count every Chinese person from the industrial east to the remote Tibetan west, from the frozen north, to the tropical southern islands.

The census workers will work for ten days, counting the lives and whereabouts of more than 1.3-billion Chinese people. It’s expected to meet some resistance from a population wary of Chinese Communist Party officials asking questions.

The Chinese regime has been promoting the event for months, with green banners and a large-scale publicity campaign. The census is expected to cost 700 million yuan (about 105 million U.S. dollars).

Most people will be asked a series of 18 questions including their name, residence, and ethnicity. For the first time, people will be counted by where they reside instead of by registered permanent addresses.

[Wang Jing, Professor at Capital University of Economics and Business, School of Labor Economics]:
“This census is beneficial in knowing where people actually live, the situation of the population distribution in rural and urban areas, the level of urbanization, and the actual proportion of rural population in China. This is an opportunity to understand the real situation.”

Last July the Chinese regime released a report saying the urban population is set to outnumber China’s rural population by 2015.

The census results are expected to highlight shifting living standards and potential social problems—like the growing problem of China’s aging population after three decades of the regime’s one-child policy.

Foto: NTDTV