Demographics

Main article: Demographics of China A 2009 population density map of the People's Republic of China. The eastern coastal provinces are much more densely populated than the western interior.

The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,338,612,968. About 21% of the population (145,461,833 males; 128,445,739 females) were 14 years old or younger, 71% (482,439,115 males; 455,960,489 females) were between 15 and 64 years old, and 8% (48,562,635 males; 53,103,902 females) were over 65 years old. The population growth rate for 2006 was 0.6%.

By end of 2010, the proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.60%, while the number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26%, giving a total proportion of 29.86% dependents. The proportion of the population of workable age was thus around 70%.

Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty since 1978. Today, about 10% of the Chinese population lives below the poverty line of US$1 per day, down from 64% in 1978. Urban unemployment in China reportedly declined to 4% by the end of 2007, although true overall unemployment may be as high as 10%.

With a population of over 1.3 billion and dwindling natural resources, China is very concerned about its population growth and has attempted, with mixed results, to implement a strict family planning policy, known as the "one-child policy." The government's goal is one child per family, with exceptions for ethnic minorities and a degree of flexibility in rural areas. It is hoped that population growth in China will stabilize in the early decades of the 21st century, though some projections estimate a population of anywhere between 1.4 billion and 1.6 billion by 2025. China's family planning minister has indicated that the one-child policy will be maintained until at least 2020.

Population of China from 1949 to 2008.

The one-child policy is resisted, particularly in rural areas, because of the need for agricultural labour and a traditional preference for boys (who can later serve as male heirs). Families who breach the policy often lie during the census.

The decreasing reliability of Chinese population statistics since family planning began in the late 1970s has made evaluating the effectiveness of the policy difficult. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may now be around 1.4. The government is particularly concerned with the large imbalance in the sex ratio at birth, apparently the result of a combination of traditional preference for boys and family planning pressure, which led to a ban on using ultrasound devices for non-emergency applications, in an attempt to prevent sex-selective abortion.

According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls, which is 0.53 points lower than the ratio obtained from a population sample survey carried out in 2005. However, the gender ratio of 118.06 is still beyond the normal range of around 105 percent, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between the years 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. Other demographers argue that perceived gender imbalances may arise from the underreporting of female births. A recent study suggests that as many as three million Chinese babies are hidden by their parents every year. According to the 2010 census, males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population, while females made up 48.73 percent of the total.

Ethnic groups Main articles: List of ethnic groups in China, Ethnic minorities in China, and Ethnic groups in Chinese history

China officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Han Chinese, who constitute about 91.51% of the total population. The Han Chinese – the world's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every province, municipality and autonomous region except Tibet and Xinjiang, and are descended from ancient Huaxia tribes living along the Yellow River.

Ethnic minorities account for about 8.49% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%.

The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign citizens living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), the United States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).

Languages Main articles: Languages of China and List of endangered languages in China 1990 map of Chinese ethnolinguistic groups.

The languages most spoken in China belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are also several major linguistic groups within the Chinese language itself. The most spoken varieties are Mandarin (the first language of over 70% of the population), Wu (includes Shanghainese), Yue (includes Cantonese and Taishanese), Min (includes Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan, and Hakka. Non-Sinitic languages spoken widely by ethnic minorities include Zhuang, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Hmong and Korean. Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca between people of different linguistic backgrounds.

Classical Chinese was the written standard in China for thousands of years, and allowed for written communication between speakers of various unintelligible languages and dialects in China. Written vernacular Chinese, or baihua, is the written standard, based on the Mandarin dialect and first popularized in Ming Dynasty novels. It was adopted, with significant modifications, during the early 20th century as the national standard. Classical Chinese is still part of the high school curriculum, and is thus intelligible to some degree to many Chinese. Since their promulgation by the government in 1956, Simplified Chinese characters have become the official standardized written script used to write the Chinese language within mainland China, supplanting the use of the earlier Traditional Chinese characters.

Urbanization See also: List of cities in China, List of cities in China by population, and Metropolitan regions of China

Since 2000, China's cities have expanded at an average rate of 10% annually. It is estimated that China's urban population will increase by 400 million people by 2025, when its cities will house a combined population of over one billion. The country's urbanization rate increased from 17.4% to 46.6% between 1978 and 2009, a scale unprecedented in human history. Between 150 and 200 million migrant workers work part-time in the major cities, returning home to the countryside periodically with their earnings.

Today, China has dozens of cities with one million or more long-term residents, including the three global cities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; by 2025, the country will be home to 221 cities with over a million inhabitants. The figures in the table below are from the 2008 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents.

v t e Largest cities or towns of the People's Republic of China Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (2010) Rank City name Province Pop. Rank City name Province Pop. ! Shanghai Beijing 1 Shanghai Shanghai 22,315,426 11 Shenyang Liaoning 5,743,718 Tianjin Guangzhou 2 Beijing Beijing 18,827,000 12 Hangzhou Zhejiang 5,695,313 3 Tianjin Tianjin 11,090,314 13 Chongqing Chongqing 5,402,721 4 Guangzhou Guangdong 11,070,654 14 Harbin Heilongjiang 4,517,549 5 Shenzhen Guangdong 10,357,938 15 Suzhou Jiangsu 4,074,000 6 Dongguan Guangdong 8,220,937 16 Jinan Shandong 3,922,180 7 Chengdu Sichuan 7,123,697 17 Xi'an Shaanxi 3,890,098 8 Hong Kong Hong Kong 7,055,071 18 Wuxi Jiangsu 3,542,319 9 Nanjing Jiangsu 6,852,984 19 Hefei Anhui 3,352,076 10 Wuhan Hubei 6,434,373 20 Changchun Jilin 3,341,700

Education Main article: Education in the People's Republic of China Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In 1986, China set the long-term goal of providing compulsory nine-year basic education to every child. By 2007, there were 396,567 primary schools, 94,116 secondary schools, and 2,236 higher education institutions in China. In February 2006, the government advanced its basic education goal by pledging to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. In March 2007, the Chinese government declared education a national "strategic priority"; the central budget for national scholarships was tripled between 2007 and 2009, and 223.5 billion yuan (US$28.65 billion) of extra state funding was allocated between 2007 and 2012 to improve compulsory education in rural areas. Free compulsory education in China consists of elementary school and middle school between the ages of 6 and 15; around 77% of children enter secondary education thereafter.

As of 2010, 94% of the population over age 15 are literate, compared to only 20% in 1950. In 2000, China's literacy rate among 15-to-24-year-olds was 98.9% (99.2% for males and 98.5% for females). In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance.

The quality of Chinese colleges and universities varies considerably across the country. The consistently top-ranked universities in mainland China are:

East China: Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, Nanjing University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University Northeast China: Jilin University, Harbin Institute of Technology North China: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Nankai University, Tianjin University Western China: Sichuan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University South Central China: Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University Health Main article: Health in China See also: Pharmaceutical industry in China

The Ministry of Health, together with its counterparts in the provincial health bureaux, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign. After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly due to better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatised, and experienced a significant rise in quality. The national life expectancy at birth rose from about 35 years in 1949 to 73.18 years in 2008, and infant mortality decreased from 300 per thousand in the 1950s to around 23 per thousand in 2006. Malnutrition as of 2002 stood at 12% of the population, according to United Nations FAO sources. In 2009, the government began a large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion, which is expected to eventually cover 90% of China's population.

As of 2012, China's national average life expectancy at birth is 74.8 years, and its infant mortality rate is 15.6 per thousand births. Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution and hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, a possible future HIV/AIDS epidemic, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained. Pollution is proving to be a particularly severe threat – in 2007, estimates of annual excess deaths in China from air and water pollution were placed at 760,000 people, and as many as 500 million Chinese lacked access to clean drinking water in 2005.

In 2011, China was estimated to be the third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals in the world. However, the Chinese population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications.

Religion Main article: Religion in China The Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai is the initial site of the Tiantai branch of Chinese Buddhism, originally built in 598 AD during the Sui Dynasty.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations which lack official approval can be subject to state persecution. An accurate estimate of the number of religious adherents is hard to obtain because of a lack of official data, but there is a general consensus that religious belief has been enjoying a resurgence in China since the late 1980s. A 1998 survey reported by Adherents.com found that 59% (over 700 million) of the population was non-religious. A later survey, conducted in 2007, found that there were 300 million religious believers in China, constituting 23% of the population, as distinct from the official figure of 100 million.

Over its history, the Chinese civilization has been influenced by various religions, including local Chinese folk religion, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Shamanism, Islam, Manicheism, Zoroastrianism and numerous new religions. Of these, Taoism and Buddhism have had the greatest impact in shaping Chinese culture. Taoism is the most notable Chinese indigenous religion, while Buddhism spread to China from India in the 1st century CE. Christianity and Islam first gained a significance presence in China in medieval times.

Today, local ethnic religions are dominant in terms of adherents, being practiced by over 30% of the Chinese population; these religions commonly overlap with Taoist practices. Buddhism is practiced by between 10.85% and 18% of Chinese. Christianity is practiced by between 3.2% and 5% of the population, while Islam accounts for around 2%.

Some of the ethnic minorities of China practice ethnic religions – Dongbaism is the traditional religion of the Nakhi people, Moism that of the Zhuang people, and Ruism that of the Qiang people. The traditional indigenous religion of Tibet is Bön, while most of Tibetans follow Tibetan Buddhism, a form of Vajrayana. However, Tibetan Buddhism has also spread to other areas of China, and has been adopted by many Han Chinese. Mahayana Buddhism (Dacheng) and its subsets Pure Land (Amidism), Tiantai and Chán (better known in English by its Japanese pronunciation Zen) are the most widely practiced denominations of Buddhism. Theravada is practiced largely by ethnic minorities along the southern geographic fringes of the Chinese mainland.