After achieving stable and low birth rate, China must shift from controlling numbers to optimizing structure in its population and family planning work, said Gu Shengzu, deputy governor of Hubei Province and an expert on population economics.
Gu made the remark at a seminar on World Population Day, July 11. Gu said that China now faces six major problems in its population structure.
· Serious gender imbalance in newborns. The country's fifth population census, conducted in 2000, showed that the average male-female ratio was 119:92, reaching as high as 130 in provinces such as Jiangxi, Guangdong and Henan.
· High numbers of birth defects. Some 800,000 to 1.2 million babies are born with defects each year.
· Aging population. Developed countries like Britain use 80 years to transform from an adult society to an aged society, with per capita GDP increasing from US$5,000 to US$10,000 during the period. China completed the transformation in 20 years with per capita GDP only 1,000 dollars. Some cities, including Dalian and Shanghai, got gray before they got rich.
· Social problems caused by migrating population. This includes children left behind in rural areas by parents who seek work in cities.
· Children of migrant population. Education is the biggest problem, and they are facing the danger of being marginalized. Schools specially constructed for these children are not of the same quality as government-run schools. Migrant parents cannot afford the fees charged by the latter, even with the doors opened to them.
· Impact of infectious diseases. AIDS in China has already jumped from high-risk groups to the wider population and has entered a period of rapid spreading.
The world population reached 5 billion on July 11, 1987. To draw the attention of world governments and the public to the population question, the United States decided in 1990 to set July 11 as World Population Day.
The world's population has now reached 6.4 billion, with 1.3 billion in China as of the end of 2003.
(People's Daily July 14, 2004)
