ABSTRACT
China has experienced great demographic changes during the last few decades. Because of the improvement in people's living standards and public health, mortality has declined considerably. Before 1950 the crude death rate was very high, around 35 per thousand or even higher; during the 1950s it decreased dramatically to under 15 per thousand; by the mid-1960s it had fallen further, to below 10 per thousand, and has stayed at this low level since. According to the 1990 census the crude death rate was 6.3 per thousand during the previous year. As a direct result of this mortality decline Chinese people now live much longer than before, and life expectancy at birth has increased from about 35 years in the late 1940s to about 70 years in the early 1990s. 2 Another significant demographic change is China's unprecedented fertility decline, which has been generated, to a large extent, by the nationwide family planning campaign. High fertility was widespread in China until the late 1960s. During the 1950s and 1960s the crude birth rate was higher than 30 per thousand in most years, and China experienced her most rapid population expansion. Since the early 1970s, however, fertility has dropped considerably. The ‘total fertility rate’ 3 has fallen from around 6 in the late 1960s to about 2 at present – which is lower than the level of population replacement. 4
