According to estimates, China has had the same demographic weight in the world since 200 BC: just over a fifth of the world’s population. In a poor country, with a per capita income of 4,400 dollars in 2003, the great challenge is to cover the basic needs (material and cultural) of a population of approximately 1,344 million inhabitants in 2011.
More than 91% of the Chinese population belongs to the so-called Han ethnic group, only about 100 million people do not belong to it. Officially, the Chinese State divides this part of its population into fifty-five groups, which it classifies as minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu).
Historical evolution of the Chinese population
The evolution of the Chinese population is not easy to synthesize, since the data existing before 1949 are scarce, sectoral and unreliable. Historians do not agree and provide figures that are difficult to fit. Most estimates that China’s population would reach 430 million in 1850, reaching 541 million in 1949.
As can be seen in the following table, the first national census of 1953 showed a figure of 594 million, which highlighted the great problem of overpopulation. Far from reducing this growth, the Chinese population doubled in the following fifty years, reaching 1,265 million inhabitants in the 2000 census. Current forecasts for 2015 are 1,402 million inhabitants.
In 2000, the Chinese population represented 21.18% (one fifth) of the planet’s total, in a territory that does not exceed 6.4% of the world. These figures become more important when the unbalanced distribution of this population in Chinese territory is observed.
Population and settlement today
To analyze the evolution of the Chinese population, like that of any other country in the world, demography uses the so-called theory of demographic transition. This theory, emerged at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, relates the evolution of birth and mortality levels in an area. Based on these data, it tries to explain the evolution of the population and its growth from high levels of mortality and fertility to increasingly lower levels. In this way, the relationship between population and socioeconomic development is established, trying to explain the direct implications of social, economic and cultural factors in the demographic dynamics of the region studied. Thanks to this theoretical model, it is possible to analyze the evolution of demographic growth in China, based on the trends followed by birth and mortality rates.
Territorial imbalances in population distribution within China
A third essential element in the study of the population of a region is its location and distribution in the territory, a factor that can be analyzed through population densities (inhabitants per square kilometer).
As we have previously pointed out, the Chinese population has doubled in just thirty-five years and represents 21% of the total world population, concentrated in only 6.3% of the territory, which represents densities of population concentration. around 137 inhabitants/km2 in 2005, with a forecast increase to 148 inhabitants/km2 by 2030.
Added to this fact is the unequal distribution of the Chinese population, an aspect that entails large territorial imbalances from a demographic point of view.
As some experts affirm, the location dynamics of the Chinese population seem to follow a combination of triple opposition: center-periphery opposition, coastal areas versus inland areas, and that between the eastern and western regions.
The range-size analysis, empirically verified by JQ Stewart and GK Zipf, relates the size of the cities of a region to its population volume. According to the authors, if we place the cities in descending order, by their population size, they will be established according to the series 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5… in which the value 1 corresponds to the population of the largest city.
Already in 1933, the Chinese demographer Hu Huangyong pointed out the existence of an empty western China and a full eastern China, where 90% of the population was concentrated in one third of the territory.
Demographic areas according to population density
In this way, as can be seen in the map of population densities, the differences in regional density draw a territorial division into three main areas that are mainly due to the relief and the existing climate, and consequently, to the use that the area has historically made. Chinese natural environment society.
This is how the interior and eastern river plains are identified, with densities greater than 400 inhabitants/km2, where cultivated rural regions can exceed 1,000 inhabitants/km2. The eight most densely populated provinces, with great agricultural and industrial wealth, concentrate 60% of the Chinese population in 20% of the territory, taking advantage of water resources and creating large urban concentrations.
The so-called “human anthills”, with high levels of population concentration, include the regions of the Sichuan Red Basin, the middle and lower Yangtze basin, the Great Plain of North China, the Shandong Peninsula and the Manchu Plain.
The Yangtze estuary (Jiangsu and Shanghai provinces) and the surrounding provinces (Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang) have experienced great growth in the last forty years, due to industrial development, concentrating more than 600 inhabitants/km2. Despite everything, although these regions have increased their population level in absolute terms, they have lost it in relative terms (with a decrease of 1.4%, between 1974-1990), in favor of other areas, such as the provinces. of the center-south (with an increase of 0.8% in the same period).
In second place is the rest of eastern China, with average densities and great differences depending on the areas and geographical conditions, where the densely populated regions are isolated and dispersed, following the arable regions: loessic valleys of Wei (Shaanxi) and Fen (Shanxi), the southeastern deltas, from Zhejiang to Guangdong and the karst depressions of Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi.
Finally, there are the sparsely populated or almost uninhabited regions of outer or western China. Thus, the four large areas with densities of less than 20 inhabitants/km2 barely house 4% of the total population (in 50% of the Chinese territory), as is the case of Tibet-Qinghai, Xinjiang-Uyghur, Inner Mongolia, northern Manchuria (Heilongjiang) and part of the Yunnan plateau, in the southwest, regions that have traditionally formed the periphery of China and where the arid or semi-arid areas, the large mountain ranges and the abrupt relief, host only population nomad from various national minorities of non-Han descent.
Rural population and urban population
China has been characterized as an eminently rural society until 1949, when, as seen above, Chinese society began the modern demographic transition.
The maintenance of traditions in rural areas and the uneven adoption of various birth control policies have led to large demographic imbalances between urban and rural regions. This aspect has been nuanced by the various rural-urban migration trends over the last two centuries.
During the period 1900-1949, living conditions, the scarcity of rural land and times of crisis pushed many millions of peasants towards the cities, both in their region of origin and in those of incipient industrialization in the Manchu Axis, the Yellow Sea coast (Huanghai), China Sea plains and main river arteries (Huang He, Yangtze and Xi Jiang).
The period from 1950 to 1979 was characterized by political and ideological ups and downs, which involved millions of population displacements throughout Chinese territory. After the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and until 1957, a series of policies were implemented that tended towards strong industrialization in the same cities in which the first industrialization took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The need for labor drove the development of the large cities in the east of the country, based on rural surpluses.
Between 1958 and 1962, the time of the Great Leap Forward, the importance given to rural industrialization and the reduction of inequalities between city and countryside, led to an urban exodus that affected more than 40 million people and eased the pressure on large cities. . Most would return, although the urban exodus continued during the period 1966-1975, the time of the Cultural Revolution.
Since 1979, the unequal natural growth between the countryside and the city has led to the existence of a large rural demographic surplus and a constant emigration to the cities. In 1992, 22% of the population worked in the industrial sector and 17% in services, predominantly urban sectors.
Since 1950 the urban population has experienced gradual growth, reaching 35% of the total population. Meanwhile, the rural population, although declining since 1990, is still the majority, but has gone from representing more than 87% in 1950 to currently being just over 64%.
Forecasts on the rural-city imbalance
Unbalanced economic development and various government policies are causing the imbalance between urban and rural areas of the country to become more evident every day.
“Only 12 of the 29 regions enjoy an annual per capita income greater than $1,000, a figure internationally accepted as the border between poverty and average development. In 2003, per capita income in urban areas increased by 9%, while in rural areas it increased only by 4%, to $319. Now that the law already allows the transfer from the countryside to the city, a certain diaspora is taking place from one side to the other, also favored by the three million private companies located there. It is estimated that 93 million rural migrants have moved to the cities – three million people arrived in Shanghai alone in 2003 – mainly to work in the construction and service sectors. Cardenal, JP (2004) On line. “Rich and poor make a two-speed china”, El Mundo, Nueva Economía supplement (March 14, 2004).
The Government’s own estimates show that before 2020, between 300 and 500 million people will emigrate to urban regions seeking to improve their purchasing power.
An interesting factor to note is the…