China’s population grew to 1.34 billion people last year, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics announced yesterday, marking a modest jump for a massive population and leading experts to suggest the country could relax its generation-old one-child policy.
The figure of 1.341 billion, which is preliminary and based on a sample survey, indicates that China added about 6.3 million people last year, up from 1.3347 billion at the end of 2009. A more accurate figure is expected to be released within the next few months, after the government tallies the results of last year’s census, the first in 10 years.
Since 1981, the government has limited families in cities to one child and rural parents to two to control population growth.
“China’s population now is mainly growing because people are living longer, not because people are having lots of babies,” said Cai Yong, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert on China’s population.
Cai said the figure reported on the National Bureau of Statistics Web site fell at the low end of government expectations. It could embolden policy makers to experiment with loosening the family planning policy he said.
China’s population growth has contracted since 1987, and the US Census Bureau has projected it will peak at slightly less than 1.4 billion in 2026, with India overtaking China as the world’s most populous nation in 2025.
Experts attribute the slowing growth rate to the strict family planning limits and to the country’s urbanization and growing prosperity.
Cai said allowing more births now would help the country cope with looking after its large and growing elderly population.
Wang Feng, director of the Tsinghua-Brookings Center for Public Policy in Beijing, calculated that the population figure for last year reflects a growth rate of 4.7 people per thousand, compared with 5.5 per thousand in 2009.
“This just continues a declining trend for the growth rate,” Wang said. “It’s getting lower every year.”
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