China launches mammoth census (Roundup)

Nov 1, 2010, 11:29 GMT

Beijing - Some 6.5 million officials and volunteers fanned out across China on Monday to launch the first census in a decade of the nation's estimated 1.4 billion people.

The 10-day census aims to record information from each of China's 400-million-plus households, with participation compulsory, the government said.

The census-takers will spend another 20 days double-checking the details for a random sample representing about one in 10,000 of the population.

Statisticians will collate the census data and produce a report by the end of April for a total budgeted cost of 8 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars), state media quoted officials as saying.

The basic census questions cover name, age, sex, ethnic group, education and residency, while 10 per cent of respondents will be asked to complete more detailed questions on their economic and social conditions.

Officials and experts have raised concerns that some people might view the census as intrusive or threatening, particularly migrants and families with children born outside the rules imposed by China's 'one child' family planning policy.

'The information must not be a reference for punishment and all census takers and authorities should strictly comply with the duty of confidentiality,' Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said in the run-up to the census.

The data will be used 'only for research' and will be destroyed once the census reports are completed, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Ma as saying.

For the first time, the census will ignore China's archaic system of household registration, under which every citizen's place of residence is fixed in one locality.

Millions of long-term urban migrants are still registered in rural households and officials are concerned that many of them will try to avoid the census because they fear punishment.

A China Radio International reporter who accompanied census staff in the central city of Zhengzhou on Monday said almost half of the 20 households they visited had refused to let them inside.

The agency quoted Duan Chengrong, head of the Demography Department at People's University in Beijing, as saying that an uncooperative attitude from some respondents was 'reasonable due to the growing awareness of privacy protection.'

Vice Premier Li Keqiang last week also said via state media that the census information would remain confidential, adding that 'very citizen has the obligation to participate.'

China recorded a population of 1.295 billion after the last census in 2000.

The ruling Communist Party launched its one-child policy in the late 1970s to curb the rapid population growth of the previous 30 years.

Government experts have estimated that the population would have swelled to about 1.7 billion without the policy.

But rights groups have documented the brutal enforcement of the controversial policy by local officials in some areas of China.

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