Chinese People

Population and Family Planning

China is a developing country with the biggest population in the world. A sample survey shows that China's population had reached 1.26 billion by the end of 1999 (excluding the population of the Hong Kong, Macao Special Administrative Regions and Taiwan Province), accounting for about 21% of the world population. China's average population density is 130 persons per square kilometer, and their distribution is very uneven: the densely region is eastern coastal areas, more than 400 persons per square kilometer; the central region is 200 people per square kilometer; while the sparsely region western area, per square kilometer less than 10 people.

When New China was founded in 1949, the Chinese mainland population of 541.67 million people. Due to social stability and development of production, medical and health conditions have improved, as well as Lack of awareness of the importance of controlling population growth and short of experience, leading to rapid population growth, by the year 1969 the population has reached 806.71 million people. From the early 1970s, the Chinese government increasingly and profoundly understanding: the rapid population growth has a negative influence not only on economic and social development, but also on the residents of employment, housing, transportation, medical care and might bring great difficulties; If Chinese can not effectively curb the excessive growth of the population and the consequent enormous pressure on forests and water resources, the ecological and environmental deterioration will become inevitable in the next few decades, and this is undoubtedly endanger the people's basic living conditions and sustainable development. As a result, according to the basic national conditions: large nation, weak economic foundation, large population and little arable land, chinese government decided to implement family planning, control population growth, improve the quality of the population to promote population and economy, society, resources, and environmental development. After the implementation of this policy, the birth rate is declining. The fifth census data show that compare to the Fourth National Population Census at 12:00 on the July 1st, 1990 to 1.13368 billion, ten years and four months in a total increase of 132.15 million, an increase of 11.66%. The average annual increase of 12.79 million people with an average growth rate of 1.07%.

Nowadays, Chinese people enjoy a higher standard of living, with greatly improved facilities for population, education and other aspects, a fact that contributes much to the overall quality of life for the entire nation!
 
Nationalities
 
China is a multiracial country consisting of 56 ethnic groups, Han is the main nationality, accounting for 91.9% of the total population. Others include 55 ethnic groups, such as Manchu, Hui, Uygur and other nationalities accounting for 8.1%. They all have their own unique culture and they are widely distributed throughtout the country.

ReligionS

Religions play an important role in the lives of many Chinese people. Buddhism is the most popular religion, with some 100 million believers. Traditional Taoism also has a lot of people believe in. The official statistics show that there are about 18 million Muslims who believe in Islam, four million Catholics, Protestant of 10 million. According to the report of the United States, Muslims are 1-2%; Christians are 3-4%.