ABSTRACT
Population China is the largest country in the world in terms of population. On 6 January 2005 the figure was 1.3 billion. By the end of 2006 it was 1.314 billion. The world population figure reached 6 billion in October 1999. India is the second largest country in the world by population, reaching 1 billion in August 1999. On 10 October 2006 the population of the United States was officially proclaimed to be 300 million. China is the third largest country in the world in terms of land area, after Russia and Canada. ‘The dominant Han today account for 93 per cent of the country’s 1.3 billion people, according to official statistics’ (IHT, 17 March 2007, p. 6). China has to support about 22 per cent of the world’s population on something like 7 per cent of the world’s arable area. Thus it is no coincidence that agricultural reform was first in line after 1978. ‘[There was] an increase in average life expectancy from thirty- five years in 1949 to sixty-eight years by 1978’ (IHT, 20 August 2005, p. 2). By 1986 life expectancy had risen to 66.9 for men and 70.9 for women (Jeffries 1993: 138). ‘By 2005 life expectancy reached 72.4 years’ (FEER, November 2007, p. 52). ‘Despite a dramatic increase in prosperity and living standards in China since 1978 average life expectancy has increased by only 3.5 years, about half the gains in longevity in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and [South] Korea over the same period’ (www.iht.com, 19 August 2005; IHT, 20 August 2005, p. 2). Since roughly the mid-1950s the state has tried to control population growth, often in draconian fashion. The present policy as regards population, formally introduced in 1979, is ‘one child’ per family with exceptions which have grown over time.
