A Passage to China (走近中国) - The State

Administrative Division

The present-day administrative division in China includes 4 municipalities directly under the central government: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing; 2 Special Administrative Regions: Hong Kong and Macao; 23 provinces: Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Henan, Huei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jiin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang; and 5 autonomous regions: Guangxi, Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia ), Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Xizang (Tibet).

Population

Chinese Population according to the two Communiques on Major Figures of the 2000 Population Census by Nation Bureau of Statistics, the People’s Republic of China, from the results of the fifth national population census in China, on March 28,2001 and on April 2,2001 respectively, had reached 1,295.33 million(including 1,265.83 of million of the mainland, 6.78 million of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 440 thousand of Macao Special Administrative Region and 22.28 million of Taiwan Province and of Jinmen, Mazu and a few other islands of Fujian Province).

Population growth in the mainland, compared with the population of 1,133.68 million from the 1990 population census (with zero hour of July 1,1990 as the reference time), increased by 132.15 million persons, or 11.66 percent over the past 10 years and 4 months. The average annual growth was 12.79 million persons, or a growth rate of 1.07 percent.

The result shows that there that there were 348.37 million family households with a population of 1,198.39 million persons on the mainland. The average size of family household was 3.44 persons, or 0.52 persons less as compared with the 3.96 persons of the 1990 population census; as to the sex composition on the mainland, 653.55 million persons or 51.63 percent were males, while 612.28 million persons or 48.37 percent were females, and the sex ratio (female=100) was 106.74; as to the age composition on the mainland, 289.79 million persons were in the age group of 0-14, accounting for 22.89 percent of the total population; 887.93 million persons in the age group of 15-64, accounting for 70.15 percent and 88.11 million persons in the age group of 65 and over, accounting for 6.96 percent, and as compared with the results of the 1990 population census, the share of people in the age group of 0-14 was down by 4.80 percentage points, and that for people aged 65 and over was up by 1.39 percentage points.
The results also show that for the composition of nationalities on the mainland, 1,159.40 million persons or 91.59 percent were of Han nationality, and 106.43 million persons or 8.41 percent were of various national minorities. Compared with the 1990 population census, the population of Han people increased by 116.92 million persons, or 11.22 percent; while the population of various national minorities increased by 15.23 million persons, or 16.70 percent. As for the composition of education attainment for the mainland, 45.71 million persons had finished university education (referring to junior college and above); 141.09 million persons had received senior secondary education (including secondary technical school education); 429.89 million persons had received junior secondary education and 451.91 million persons had had primary education (the educated persons included graduates and students in school). According to the census, on the mainland of China, 85.07 million persons were illiterate (i.e. people over 15 years of age who can not read or can read very little), but compared with the 15.88 percent of illiterate people in the 1990 population census, the proportion had dropped to 6.72 percent, or down by 9.16 percentage points.

As for urban and rural population on the mainland of China, there were 455.94 million urban residents, accounting for 36.09 percent of the total population; and that of rural residents stood at 807.39 million, accounting for 63.91 percent. Compared with the 1990 population census, the proportion of urban residents rose by 9.86 percentage points.

Ethnic Groups

China’s 56 ethnic groups form a united, multi-ethnic country with the Han people accounting for 91.59% of the total population and the rest are minority ethnic groups. As the majority of the population is of the Han ethnic group, China’s other ethnic groups are customarily referred to as the national minorities. The Han people can be found throughout the country, though mainly on the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Pearl River valleys, and the Northeast Plain. The national minorities, though fewer in number, are also scattered over a vast area, in approximately 64.3 percent of Chinese territory, mainly distributed in the border regions from northeast China to north, northwest and southwest China. Yunnan Province, home to more than 20 ethnic groups, has the greatest diversity of minority peoples in China. The largest minority ethnic group is the Zhuang nationality, totaling about 15.6 million people while Lhoba, the smallest, has only more than 2,300 people. The Han people have their own spoken and written language, known as the Chinese language, which commonly used throughout China. The Hui and Manchu ethnic groups also use the Han(Chinese) language. The other 53 ethnic groups have their own spoken languages and 23 ethnic groups have their own written languages. The same Han originated over two thousand years ago during the Han Dynasty.

In most of China’s cities and towns, two or more ethnic groups live together. Taking shape over China’s long history, this circumstance of different ethnic groups “living together in one area while still living in individual compact communities in special areas” continues to provide the practical basis for political, economic and cultural intercourse between the Han and the various minority peoples, and for the functioning of the autonomous national minority areas system.

Climate

China’s climate has a marked continental monsoonal nature, characterized by a great variety, or extremely diverse, tropical in the south to sub arctic in the north. Northerly winds prevail in winter, while southerly winds reign in summer. The four seasons are quite distinct. The rainy season coincides with the hot season. From September to April of the following year, the dry and cold winter monsoons from Siberia and Mongolia in the north gradually become weak as they reach the southern part of the country, resulting in cold and dry winters and great differences in temperature. The summer monsoons last from April to September.
The warm and moist summer monsoons from the oceans bring abundant rainfall and high temperatures, with little difference in temperature between the south and the north. China’s complex and varied of temperature belts and dry and moist zones. In terms of temperature, the nation can be sectored from south to north into equatorial, tropical, subtropical, warm-temperature, temperate, and cold-temperate zones; in terms of moisture, it can be sectored from southeast to northwest into humid (32 percent of land area), semi-humid (15 percent), semi-arid (22 percent) and arid zones (31 percent).

China experiences a few typhoons every year along southern and eastern coasts, and also damaging floods, sometimes earthquakes, droughts or tsunamis. But the current environmental issues are air pollution from reliance on coal; water shortages, particularly in the north; water pollution from untreated wastes; deforestation; the loss of agriculture land to soil erosion and economic development; and desertification. To tackle these problems, China has entered the following international agreement: Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling, and also signed Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol and Nuclear Test Plan.

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