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China Chapter 2. Physical Environment and Population
REMARKABLY VARIED LANDSCAPES suggest the disparate climate and
broad reach of China, the third largest country in the world in
terms of area. China's climate ranges from subarctic to tropical.
Its topography includes the world's highest peaks, tortuous but
picturesque river valleys, and vast plains subject to lifethreatening but soil-enriching flooding. These characteristics have
dictated where the Chinese people live and how they make their
livelihood.
The majority of China's people live in the eastern segment of
the country, the traditional China Proper. Most are peasants
living, as did their forebears, in the low-lying hills and central
plains that stretch from the highlands eastward and southward to
the sea. Agriculture predominates in this vast area, generally
favored by a temperate or subtropical climate. The meticulously
tilled fields are evidence in part of the government's continuing
concern over farm output and the food supply.
Although migration to urban areas has been restricted since the
late 1950s, as of the end of 1985 about 37 percent of the
population was urban. An urban and industrial corridor formed a
broad arc stretching from Harbin in the northeast through the
Beijing area and south to China's largest city, the huge industrial
metropolitan complex of Shanghai.
The uneven pattern of internal development, so strongly
weighted toward the eastern part of the country, doubtless will
change little even with developing interest in exploiting the
mineral-rich and agriculturally productive portions of the vast
northwest and southwest regions. The adverse terrain and climate of
most of those regions have discouraged dense population. For the
most part, only ethnic minority groups have settled there.
The "minority nationalities" are an important element of
Chinese society. In 1987 there were 55 recognized minority groups,
comprising nearly 7 percent of the total population. Because some
of the groups were located in militarily sensitive border areas and
in regions with strategic minerals, the government tried to
maintain benevolent relations with the minorities. But the
minorities played only a superficial role in the major affairs of
the nation.
China's ethnically diverse population is the largest in the
world, and the Chinese Communist Party and the government work
strenuously to count, control, and care for their people. In 1982
China conducted its first population census since 1964. It was by
far the most thorough and accurate census taken under Communist
rule and confirmed that China was a nation of more than 1 billion
people, or about one-fifth of the world's population. The census
provided demographers with a wealth of accurate data on China's
age-sex structure, fertility and mortality rates, and population
density and distribution. Useful information also was gathered on
minority ethnic groups, urban population, and marital status. For
the first time since the People's Republic of China was founded,
demographers had reliable information on the size and composition
of the Chinese work force.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Chinese government introduced,
with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success, a number of family
planning, or population control, campaigns and programs. The most
radical and controversial was the one-child policy publicly
announced in 1979. Under this policy, which had different
guidelines for national minorities, married couples were officially
permitted only one child. Enforcement of the program, however,
varied considerably from place to place, depending on the vigilance
of local population control workers.
Health care has improved dramatically in China since 1949.
Major diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and scarlet fever have
been brought under control. Life expectancy has more than doubled,
and infant mortality has dropped significantly. On the negative
side, the incidence of cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and heart
disease has increased to the extent that these have become the
leading causes of death. Economic reforms initiated in the late
1970s fundamentally altered methods of providing health care; the
collective medical care system was gradually replaced by a more
individual-oriented approach.
More liberalized emigration policies enacted in the 1980s
facilitated the legal departure of increasing numbers of Chinese
who joined their overseas Chinese relatives and friends. The
Four Modernizations program (see Glossary),
which required access of
Chinese students and scholars, particularly scientists, to foreign
education and research institutions, brought about increased
contact with the outside world, particularly the industrialized
nations. Thus, as China moved toward the twenty-first century, the
diverse resources and immense population that it had committed to
a comprehensive process of modernization became ever more important
in the interdependent world.
Data as of July 1987
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