1 “The 800 million people commemorate with extreme sorrow the death of the great leader and teacher Chairman Mao,” Jen-min jih-pao (Jen-min) (People's Daily), 20 September 1976, p.2.Google Scholar

2 New China News Analysis (NCNA) (Peking), 28 December 1976,Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), No.250 (28 December 1976), E15.Google Scholar

3 In November 1971, in an interview with a Cairo newsman, Vice-premier Li Hsien-nien indicated that the central authorities did not know the size of the population of China and that various ministries in Peking used divergent estimates as suited their own purposes. The figures ranged from below 750 million to 830 million. (See Mamduh Rida, “Days in China – an interview with the no. 3 man in China,” Al Jumhuriyah (Cairo), 18 November 1971; FBIS, No.230 (30 November 1971), A8.) Chou En-lai was reported to have said in April 1972 that the population was well over 700 million but not yet 800 million (see Radio Moscow, 24 October 1972; FBIS (Soviet Union), No. 209 (27 October 1972), D6; Han Suyin, “Population growth and birth control in China,” Eastern Horizon, Vol. 12, No. 5 (1973), p. 8; and Richard Hughes, column in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 82, No. 40 (8 October 1973), p. 25). Beginning in August 1974, several official sources referred to the population of China as “nearly 800 million.” (For example, Huang Shu-tse, vice-minister of health, in a speech to the United Nations World Population Conference in Bucharest, 21 August 1974, “China's views on major issues of world population,” Peking Review, Vol. 17, No. 35 (30 August 1974), p. 9, and Chou En-lai, “Report on the work of the government,” NCNA–English (Peking), 20 January 1975, FBIS, No. 13 (20 January 1975), D21.) By 1974 Chinese sources had dropped the qualifying word “nearly.”Google Scholar

4 “China: new provincial population data,”Australian Commission Memorandum, No.934 (6 October 1976).Google Scholar

5 Hu Huan-yung, “ Chung-kuo ke-sheng ch'ü mien-chi jen-k'ou chih shih-t'u” (“A graph of the area and population of China by province and region”), Ti-li chih-shih (Geographical Knowledge), No.9 (14 September 1957), p.391.Google Scholar

6 See Aird, John S., Population Estimates for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974, International Population Reports, Series P-95, No.73, note 20.Google Scholar

7 State Statistical Bureau, Wei-ta ti shih-nien – Chung-hua Jen-min Kung-ho-kuo ching-chi ho wen-hua chien-she ch'eng-chiu ti t'ung-chi (The Great Ten Years – Statistics on Economic and Cultural Construction Achievements in the People's Republic of China) (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1 September 1959), p. 9.

8 For a review and evaluation of the official accuracy claims, see Aird, John S., “Population growth,” Chapter 4 in Alexander Eckstein, Walter Galenson, and Ta-chung Liu (eds.), Economic Trends in Communist China (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), pp.239–44.Google Scholar

9 T'ung-chi kung-tso Data Section,“Data on China's population from 1949 to 1956,” T'ung-chi kung-tso (Statistical Work), No.11 (14 June 1957); Extracts from China Mainland Magazines, No.91 (22 July 1957), pp.22 –25.Google Scholar

10 Hu Huan-yung's provincial figures add to a total of 604,667,000, whereas the June 1957 series gives a year-end 1954 total of 601,720,000. (See Hu, loc. cit. and T'ung-chi kung-tso Data Section, p.23.) The year-end 1957 total of 646,530,000 is given in State Statistical Bureau, loc. cit. and the 1957 natural increase rate in Chandrasekhar, China's S., China's Population: Census and Vital Statistics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1959), p.50.Google Scholar

11 For further discussion of some of these problems, see Aird, Population Estimates and Projections for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974, pp. 4–5; ——, The Size, Composition, and Growth of the Population of Mainland China, International Population Statistics Reports, Series P-90, No. 15, Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce (1961), pp. 31–42; ——, “Population growth,” pp. 218–23; and ——, “Official population data,” Chapter 5 in Yuan-li Wu (ed.), China: A Handbook (New York: Praeger Publications, 1973), pp. 94–96.

12 Hu, loc. cit.Google Scholar

13 The 11 provinces are Kirin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Shansi, Kansu, Sinkiang, Hunan, Hupeh, Kwangsi, Kweichow, and Tibet.Google Scholar

14 Long before the work was completed, foreign observers speculated that if the figure returned was larger than 700 million, the results of the investigation would not be published. For example, see “China believed to have held census,” The Times (London), 10 July 1964, p. 12.

15 See for example Joan Robinson, , “What's new in China?” Eastern Horizon, Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 1965), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

16 Hsüeh Feng, “Chung-kung ti 1964-nien jen-k'ou p'u-ch'a” (“Communist China's general census of 1964”), Tsu-kuo (China Monthly) (Hong Kong), No. 56, (1 November 1968), pp. 17–18 and back cover.Google Scholar

17 Pi-chao, Chen, “China's population program at the grass roots level,” Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 4, No. 8 (August 1973), p. 219. Chou is also quoted as saying that the natural increase rate was “just under 2 per cent per year.” This makes no sense and is in conflict with previous statements by Chou. Given the year-end 1957 total of 646.53 million, a figure of 700 million by mid-year 1964 would imply an average annual increase rate for the 6½-year period of 1.23 per cent. Edgar Snow says that in 1964 Chou told him that the increase rate had dropped to “just above 2 per cent” in 1961 but had “again approached 2.5 per cent” in 1962 (“The Chinese equation,” The Sunday Times (London), 23 January 1966, p. 25). He also said that Chou told him that the government “hoped to see population growth drop below 2 per cent by 1970” and that he was “authoritatively told” (by whom is not indicated) that by 1966 the rate “actually fell below 2 per cent” but that it “shot up again during the cultural revolution” (“Report from China – II: Population Care and Control,” The New Republic, 1 May 1971, p. 21. Another source reports that Chou told foreign visitors in 1972 that the population growth rate in 1966 was “approximately 1.9 per cent” and that since then it was estimated to be “1.9 and 2.0 per cent” (notes on a seminar talk by Peter E. C. Chen to the Population Council on 29 September 1972).Google Scholar

18 Co-ordinating Group for Research on the Etiology of Oesophageal Cancer in North China, “Hua-pei ti-ch'ü shih-kuan-yen liu-hsing-ping-hsüeh ho ping-yin-hsüeh ti ch'u-pu tiao-ch'a yen-chiu” (“Epidemiology and etiology of oesophageal cancer in North China: a preliminary report”), Chung-hua i-hsüeh tsa-chih (Chinese Medical Journal), No. 11 (November 1974), p. 671.Google Scholar

19 Department of Civil Affairs, Taiwan Provincial Government, 1964 Taiwan Demographic Fact Book Republic of China, December 1965, p. 2. The United Nations Demographic Yearbook for 1965 gave a reported total of 12,070,102 excluding armed forces which evidently account for most of the difference between this figure and the Factbook total. The Chinese total for Taiwan may have been a slightly modified version of the Yearbook figure.Google Scholar

20 Shih-chieh ti-t'u ts'e (World Atlas) (Peking: Ti-t'u ch'u-pan she), editions of February and December 1972. The figure of 12.35 million was almost 2 million below the 1953 census total and made no sense at all. Presumably it was an error.Google Scholar

21 Chung-kuo ti-t'u ts'e (Atlas of China) (Sian(?): People's Printing Plant, October 1973). (Compiled by Ti-t'u ch'u-pan she.) Administrative area data are said to be as of December 1972.

22 Chung-hua Jen-min Kung-ho-kuo fen-sheng ti-t'u-chi (Provincial Atlas of the People's Republic of China) (Peking: Ti-t'u ch'u-pan she, 1st edition, October 1974).

23 Chung-kuo ti-t'u ts'e (Atlas of China) (Sian(?): People's Printing Plant, 3rd edition, March 1976). (Compiled by Ti-t'u ch'u-pan she.)Google Scholar

24 Mao added that he could not believe that the population could be that large. See Edgar Snow, “Interview with Mao,” New Republic, 27 February 1965, p. 20. But Mao was never able to grasp the idea of a steadily growing population total. In his off-the-record remarks to the Supreme State Conference on 27 February 1957 Mao is rumoured to have called for a stationary population at a level of 600 million, a total which, according to official data, had been surpassed at the end of 1954 (see “Communist China – the population problem,” Current Notes on International Affairs (Canberra), Vol. 29, No. 11 (November 1958), p. 717). In his conversation with Pompidou in 1973, Mao reportedly told the French president that even he did not know the exact figures on China's population. He added: “I am not sure that we are 800 million. I doubt even if we have reached 700 million. The census makes it look as if the Chinese are always growing.” (See “When Mao spoke to Pompidou of ‘cabbages and kings’,” The Washington Post, 28 October 1976, p. A22.)Google Scholar

25 See Aird, Population Estimates for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974, pp. 12–16.Google Scholar

26 Central Intelligence Agency, People's Republic of China: Administrative Atlas, March 1976, p. 6.Google Scholar

27 The evidence must not be made to appear stronger than it is. For Kirin, Shensi, Shanghai, and Yunnan, it requires the presumption that the news item figures were rounded downward from the 1964 totals despite the fact that the residual was more than half way to the next million, a type of rounding not uncommon in Chinese sources. For Peking, Tientsin, Ningsia, Sinkiang, and Tsinghai, the magnitudes are too small to sustain positive identification with the atlas figures for mid-year 1964. For Shansi, the match is with the revised figure, not the one originally cited in the February 1972 atlas, and for Tientsin, the match is with the original total of 4.28 million. On the other hand, in three or four cases the first cited news item figure may already have been updated by the time of the first citation, which was three or four years after the census date, hence the lack of correspondence may not mean that the news item figure was inconsistent with the atlas total for mid-year 1964.Google Scholar

28 The first five provinces are Shansi, Ningsia, Chekiang, Fukien, and Kiangsi; the second four are Hopeh (including Peking and Tientsin), Shensi, Hupeh, and Kwangtung. Perhaps Kwangtung should not be included in this comparison, since the growth rate assigned to Kwangtung for 1953–57 was arrived at somewhat arbitrarily by a method described in Aird, Population Estimates for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974, pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

29 The change in figures for Kirin seems to have resulted not from an updating of population figures but from the addition of territory during the boundary changes of 1969. The change from 23 to 25 million for Heilungkiang also seems to have been due to boundary changes. Hunan is not included among those provinces with two updatings because its initial figure dates from July 1964. Sinkiang and Szechwan are not counted as having updated their figures, because the first figure shown for Sinkiang dates from April 1964 and the second figure shown for Szechwan was not cited in a provincial news item until 1975. Hopeh, Ningsia and Shantung are excluded because the changes shown are erratic and do not indicate progressive updating.Google Scholar

30 Where a “more than” figure is given together with the same number without the “more than,” the pair is counted as a single case. In the last column of the table the derived total for Kwangtung is excluded from the count.Google Scholar

31 The sources for these figures are given in the notes to Table 1. Text citations of sources of provincial figures will not be footnoted unless the sources cited are not included there.Google Scholar

32 The new figure for Shantung was first cited too soon after the beginning of 1977 to have been a compilation of year-end 1976 figures. The process of compilation involves many levels and is invariably delayed at each level by the latest unit to report. In the past, some provincial level units have been unable to complete compilation in less than four or five months.Google Scholar

33 Bradsher, Henry S., “Census taking for all China is reported,” The Star and News, Washington D.C., 15 January 1973, p. B-6. There is also a report of a “census” of Luwan District of Shanghai taken in 1971 (see Sidel, Victor W., Serve the People, Observations on Medicine in the People's Republic of China (New York: Josiah Macy Junior Foundation; 1973), pp. 238–66). It is not clear how this effort may have been related to a population investigation in the municipality as a whole in 1972.Google Scholar

34 Notes on a seminar talk by Chen, Peter E. C., loc. cit. The 1953 census was also co-ordinated with the election of delegates to the NPC.Google Scholar

35 “A new look appears in family planning in Shihfang County,” Jen-min, 1 February 1976, Survey of People's Republic of China Press (SPRCP), No. 6063 (26 March 1976), p. 228.Google Scholar

36 Banister, Judith, “Implementing fertility and mortality decline in the People's Republic of China - recent official data,” from The Current Vital Rates and Population Size of the People's Republic of China and Its Provinces, Ph.D. dissertation, Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1977 (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, St. Louis, Missouri, April 1977), p. 4. This story raises some interesting questions. The calculation of vital rates would have required the compilation of total births and deaths for the calendar year, presumably from the same registration records which the investigation was supposed to verify and correct, and annual average population totals. The field investigation of the local population totals would have taken place as of some date in December, but the figures on births and deaths could not have been assembled until after the end of the year. This would mean two separate examinations of the records even if no field verification were attempted, and possibly two separate field counts - a cumbersome and improbable procedure. The arrangements as represented by the commune cadre sound more makeshift than those described by another local functionary for the investigation of 1964, yet, as will be seen below, the provincial population figures that presumably come from the investigation of the 1970s seem more reasonable generally than those from the investigation of 1964. Much more information is needed about both investigations before these anomalies can be cleared up.Google Scholar

37 The eight provinces are Heilungkiang, Kirin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Kansu, Ningsia, Tsinghai, and Sinkiang.Google Scholar

38 The estimates were made on the basis of assumed mean population densities in the density zones in Inner Mongolia as shown on a secondary school wall map of population densities in China. This method is described in Aird; Population Estimates for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

39 Ernest Ni estimated that the urban proportion of Liaoning's population was 42.0 per cent in 1953 and 42.4 per cent by mid-year 1958. See Ernest Ni, Distribution of the Urban and Rural Population of Mainland China: 1953 and 1958, International Population Reports, Series P-95, No. 56, U.S. Department of Commerce (October 1960), p. 12.Google Scholar

40 An average growth rate of “about 2 per cent” was cited by Chi Lung, Chinese delegate to the 29th session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East in a speech on 16 April 1973 (see “China explains her views on the population question,” Peking Review, Vol. 16, No. 17 (27 April 1973), p. 17) and the same rate is implicit in the total population figures given by Huang Shu-tse, Chinese delegate to the United Nations World Population Conference in a speech on 21 August 1974 (see “China's views on major issues of world population,” Peking Review, Vol. 17, No. 35 (30 August 1974), p. 9). This figure could not have been based on accurate national registration data, because it is unlikely that such data exist even for a single year. It is probably based instead on the officially reported natural increase rate of 20 per thousand for 1953 announced at the time when the final census results were released and apparently derived from data obtained in experimental vital registration in a sample of reporting units, largely urban, that had been established several years earlier. Nevertheless, the average annual increase rate of 2 per cent does not seem unreasonable.Google Scholar

50 Negative growth rates for 1957–64 are shown for Kansu, Anhwei, Kwangsi, and Szechwan. Excessively high growth rates for the period from 1964 to the present are shown for Anhwei, Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangsi, Kweichow, and Yunnan and the rates for Tibet and Hunan may also be too high.Google Scholar

51 See John S. Aird, Population Estimates for the Provinces of the People's Republic of China: 1953 to 1974.Google Scholar

52 Ibid. p. 12.

53 All of the estimates and the reported figures shown in Table 3 are ultimately based on the official figures from the census of 1953, which I believe, as I have argued elsewhere, under-counted the total population by not less than 5 per cent. See Aird, John S, “Population growth,” pp. 242–44.Google Scholar

54 Colin, Clark, “Economic development in Communist China,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 84, No. 2 (1976), pp. 239–43. Clark fails to cite Orleans' latest series of estimates, which show much higher increase rates, although the series was published in July 1975 (see note 58). The rationale for Clark's series is obscure, but it appears to rest on a minimal and rather selective use of the available source materials.Google Scholar

55 The United Nations Population Division does not publish separate estimates of the population of the People's Republic of China and of Taiwan. It projects the population of the People's Republic, adds a figure for Taiwan based on current official data from Taipei, and publishes the combined total as the population of “China.” This procedure admittedly is followed for “political” reasons. The most recent United Nations medium model estimate for Taiwan and the People's Republic combined as of mid-year 1976 is 852,565,000. If the Foreign Demographic Analysis Division's estimate of 16,286,000 for Taiwan as of mid-year 1976 is subtracted from the United Nations combined total, the figure for the People's Republic is 836,279,000. The United Nations figure is given in Population Division, Department of Economic, and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat, “Single-year population estimates and projections for major areas, regions, and countries of the world, 1950–2000,” 6 October 1975, p. 10.Google Scholar

56 The figure given in the Population Reference Bureau's “1976 world population data sheet” is 836.8 million, but this figure was apparently based on the United Nations 1975 total and an increase rate, which may account for the small discrepancy between this total and that given in note 55.Google Scholar

57 A figure of 853,996,000 as of mid-year 1976 was included in a series sent by the Center to the Population Information Program of George Washington University in September 1976.Google Scholar

58 An annual average figure derived from the 1 January 1976 and 1977 figures of 863.0 and 875.1 million, respectively, given in Orleans, Leo A., “China's population: can the contradictions be resolved,” in China: A Reassessment of the Economy, Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 10 July 1975, p. 77.Google Scholar

59 The figures are given in Table 1 of Ravenholt, R. T., “World population crisis and action toward solution,” a paper presented at the dedication of the Prentice Women's Hospital and Maternity Center, Chicago, Illinois, 1 January 1976, included in Ravenholt's testimony before the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations of the U.S. House of Representatives on 7 April 1976, and reprinted in the Hearings on the 1977 appropriations, Part 2 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 862.Google Scholar

60 Although this is not the place to elaborate on the point, all of the above estimates yield their low totals for mid-year 1976 partly by explicitly or implicitly rejecting the State Statistical Bureau's year-end 1957 population totals and the implied increase rates for 1953–57. The United Nations estimates begin, as do those of Clark and Orleans, with the 1953 census total but proceed at rates of growth so much below those in the official data for 1953–57 that by year-end 1957 the United Nations series shows a total of about 619 million, the Orleans series a total of 638.3 million, and Clark's series presumably the same since his growth rates for 1953–58 are the same as those of Orleans. The State Statistical Bureau's year-end 1957 total was 646.53 million. The International Statistical Programs Center series begins with a total of 712.32 million for mid-year 1964, which is said to have been obtained “by summing the announced figures from various regions,” presumably the figures cited in news items in the middle 1960s. However, the total used is higher than the 1964 total of 691.22 million indicated by the atlas compilation, higher than the sum of the news item figures first cited after mid-year 1964, which is 684.32 million, but lower than the sum of the largest of the news item figures cited by 1970, which is 723.32 million. Apparently some of the components of the International Statistical Programs Center's total had been updated since mid-year 1964, hence the total itself could not be a mid-year 1964 total. In any case, even with some updated figures included, the total of 712.32 million cannot be accepted as a mid-year 1964 total without implicitly rejecting at least the State Statistical Bureau's year-end 1957 total if not the 1953 census total. As has already been shown, the mid-year 1964 figures are, in many cases, not compatible with the official figures for 1953–57. It is a mistake to accept defective data in place of more adequate data merely because the defective data are more recent. Ravenholt bases his series on a total of 713 million for mid-year 1964, which he somewhat ambiguously attributes to the “revolutionary committees” in his paper but which he says privately came from the International Statistical Programs Center, which would seem to mean that this total is also based on a compilation of news item figures gratuitously assigned to mid-year 1964. The decisions of all these estimators to opt for lower increase rates than those indicated in the official data for the 1950s may have been influenced in part by the defective figures from the 1964 investigation and the subsequent news item provincial figures, but they may also have been influenced by the lagging “rhetorical” People's Republic population totals of 700 million, current from 1966 until the early 1970s, and 800 million, current since 1974 and still in use. But both of these totals must have been out of date when they first appeared and could only become more so with the passage of time. Certainly their continued use does not mean that the central authorities in general, despite the opinions of Mao, thought of them as a close approximation of the actual population total. As has been shown, the 800 million figure has recently been cited in conjuction with provincial figures that add to a total closer to 900 million. In due course, the figure of 900 million will displace its predecessor, but it may not do so until some years after the central authorities believe the population has passed that total. Presumably they are still, as in the past, reluctant to call attention to evidence of the continuing growth of the population. In any case, the round totals must never be assumed to be close approximations of the actual figure shown in undisclosed official data as of the time of citing. They only indicate a magnitude that is believed to have been surpasat some indefinite prior point in time.Google Scholar

61 Banister, “Implementing fertility and mortality decline,” p. 41.Google Scholar

62 Ibid. pp. 35–36. Banister says that this inconsistency has been apparent since the 1960s. Actually, some inconsistencies between the national population totals and the national vital rates were already apparent in the early 1950s, but the discrepancies began to be major in 1957 and 1958.

63 See the source note in Table 4 for 1958–60.

64 If the remarks attributed to Li Hsien-nien by the Cairo newsman are accurate, the range of “official” estimates in 1971 was from under 750 to over 800 million (see note 3). Peter E. C. Chen was in a group of visitors to China in 1972 who were told by Chou En-lai that the central authorities have population data but do not publish them because they are unreliable. According to Chen at least some of the provinces appear to maintain two sets of population figures, one of which is a “nominal” figure and the other a “planning” figure. The two examples cited by Chen are rather curious. For Hopch Province he says the “nominal” figure was 38 million and the “planning” figure was 42 million; however, at a glance these appear to be rounded versions of the official figures for 1953 and 1957, respectively. The other example is given as “Hunan” in the seminar notes (which were not prepared by Professor Chen), but the magnitude of the figures indicates that Honan was intended. The “nominal” figure was 50 million and the planning figure 60 million. In this case, the first figure is obviously a rounded version of the 1964 total, widely repeated in the news items of the late 1960s, and the second figure is the one in current use. (Notes on a seminar talk by Peter E. C. Chen, loc. cit.) Han Su-yin claims that she was told during her visit to China in the summer of 1973 that the central authorities have two sets of total population figures that differ by “about 30 million,” which she then interprets, rather gratuitously, as an indication of the margin of error in the official estimates. (See Han Suyin, “Population growth and birth control in China,” p. 8.) Although it is obvious that these accounts are not in agreement, they seem to corroborate the idea of a plurality of official figures the differences among which cannot be resolved by the data currently available in Peking.Google Scholar

65 The few available population growth rates for rural localities in other provinces in the 1960s are higher still. The data suggest, and the Chinese authorities themselves have sometimes intimated, that birth control efforts had little demographic impact prior to the 1970s.Google Scholar

66 For example, the new figure was given to visiting journalists, presumably during October 1977, by Vice-premier Teng-k'uei, Chi. See, “China's sideways,” The Economist, 5 November 1977, p. 103.Google Scholar