PEOPLE

China's 1,059 million people make it by far the world's most populous country.¹ The vast majority of these belong to the dominant ethnic group, the Han (those we conventionally think of as 'Chinese') but China contains 56 nationalities.²

...Tibetan

One child families
China has the strictest family planning policy in the world. Each couple is only allowed one child and great pressure is put on women to abort a second pregnancy. But the real drop in China's birth rate came in the 1970s, before the one-child policy was introduced in 1979. Between 1965 and 1980 the 50-per-cent drop in China's birth rate was greater than that in any other country. This was due both to better living standards since the Revolution and to the availability of contraceptives.

First official figures for 1986 indicate the birth rate has risen sharply, making the rate of natural increase - the difference between the birth and death rates - 14.⁴ An even stricter application of the one-child rule - more observed in the breach than the practice in the countryside - is likely as a result.

Child mortality
The decline in the death rate of Chinese children under five - from 202 per thousand in 1960 to 50 per thousand in 1985 - is the eleventh sharpest fall in the world over that period.¹

	AGRICULTURE

China feeds 22 per cent of the world's population on only 7 per cent of the world's cultivable land. It has successfully boosted food production by more intensive use of irrigation and chemical fertilizers.²

As the figures show, grain production soared to an all-time peak in 1984. One key reason was the increase in the price paid for grain by the State; another was the responsibility system by which farmers kept their own profits. But grain production fell sharply in 1985 to 380 million tons because peasants started to neglect staples for more profitable crops like sugar. Anxiety about this was allayed by the recovery to 390 million tons in 1986.⁵ But the figures also bear out that the division of the land into thin, privately-worked strips has meant that tractors are less used.

	QUALITY OF LIFE

There is certainly more money around in the new China - and a consumer boom is resulting, with sales of televisions and washing machines rocketing. But any new prosperity is founded on the dramatic improvements in health, education and nutrition brought about by the 1949 Revolution.

LIFE EXPECTANCY⁶

FOOD¹
Calories available daily to each person as a percentage of their requirements stood at 111 in 1985, similar to that in Japan (113) and Australia (115).

WEALTH
Between 1965 and 1984 the gross national product per head rose by an average of 4.5 per cent a year - the twelfth highest rise in the world over that period.⁷

Between 1978 and 1985 the average farmer's annual income increased by 14.8 per cent after allowing for inflation.⁸

But the Chinese Government admits that 60 million rural people still live in poverty, especially in arid western China (which includes Tibet).6

	CONSUMPTION

Consumer durables per hundred households²

Television was made available in the countryside only a decade ago but by 1986 TV sets were found in 30 million rural homes - 11 per cent of rural households. 3,000 villages are called 'TV villages' where every family has at least one TV.¹⁰