China is 1.34 Billion Strong, but graying too

China’s population is aging and increasingly urban, according to the 2010 government census released on April 28. Almost half of the population of 1.34 billion (49.7 per cent) now lives in cities, up from about 36 per cent 10 years ago.

The proportion of people aged 14 or under came out at 16.6 per cent, down by 6.29 percentage points from the last census in 2000. The number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26 per cent, up almost three percentage points. The rapid rise in average age is raising concerns about the capacity of the nation to sustain the high levels of growth it has achieved in the past 30 years.

The government one-child policy is seen as one reason for the graying population. The average household now numbers 3.1 people, down from 3.44 a decade ago. Increasingly, Chinese media are calling for a halt to the one-child policy, which was introduced in the 1980s to manage population growth at a time of slow economic development and widespread poverty. Speaking at a recent meeting of Communist Party leaders, the president, Hu Jintao, backed the continuation of the current policy in order to keep population growth low.

Some analysts believe that the same policy has undermined China’s traditional extended family system, giving rise to a generation of single-child families, leaving the problem of caring for aging parents up in the air.