This was the last official compilation of provincial figures ever to be released by the PRC. Some kind of population investigation, presumably an effort to update existing population records, was undertaken in the summer of 1964, but the results were never officially issued. No population total for 1964 has ever been disclosed. What seem to be the 1964 provincial population figures in units of 10,000 appeared in several atlases published in the PRC between 1974 and 1976, but the sources do not date the figures or otherwise disclose their origin. If indeed these are the 1964 provincial figures, many of them are incompatible with the 1953 and 1957 figures for the same provinces.

93

From the middle 1960's until the early 1970's, news dispatches from the provincial level in the PRC cited a number of round provincial population totals in millions which are generally consistent with the atlas figures. In a few instances the figures seem to have been updated and, in the case of the provinces that acquired a large portion of northeastern Inner Mongolia in 1969, adjusted to allow for boundary changes, but, for the most part, the figures cited tended to be repeated year after year without change. By the middle 1970's, the public citation of provincial figures had virtually come to an end.

Provincial Figures Since September 1976

The new round of citings of provincial figures that began in September 1976 resembled that of the 1960's in that the figures were rounded to millions and were never explicitly dated. They also tended to appear in highly rhetorical contexts in which the implications were political rather than statistical. Once again, there is reason to believe that the figures were derived in some fashion from the results of a national effort to obtain a new count of the population. Several reports and rumors from various sources say that field investigations of the population were underway in various areas in 1972 and some indicate that the effort was nationwide." In that same year a group of foreign visitors reportedly were told by Chou En-lai that a "census" was planned for "the near future." 95 As in the case of the 1964 investigation, no notice was taken of the event by PRC news media.

However, unlike the news item provincial totals of the 1960's, the figures that have been cited since 1976 have, in a number of cases, been updated, some of them several times, as though they were derived from population records or estimates that change from year to year. The updatings are not regular, and some of the updated figures may not actually be current totals. Szechwan went from 80 million, a figure cited repeatedly since 1973, to 90 million in the spring of 1977, and Honan went from 60 million, a figure first cited in 1972, to 70 million in December 1977; one cannot be sure that the 90 million for Szechwan refers to yearend 1976 or the 70 million for Honan to midyear 1977. Like the national round population totals, these figures may have been quite out of date when they first appeared.

93 For further discussion of the 1964 provincial figures, see John S. Aird, "Recent Provincial Population Figures," The China Quarterly, No. 73, March 1978, pp. 1-44.

Henry S. Bradsher, "Census Taking for All China Is Reportéd," The Star and News, Washington, Jan. 15, 1973, p. B6; and Judith Banister, The Current Vital Rates and Population Size of the People's Republic of China and Its Provinces, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Stanford University, Sept. 1977, pp. 68-69.

Notes on a seminar talk by Peter E. C. Chen to the Population Council on Sept. 29, 1972.

The new figures indicate provincial and national population totals much larger than those previously cited. In fact, when compared with the provincial data from official sources for 1953 and 1957, they are much more plausible than are the figures from the 1964 investigation. Although some PRC news dispatches still continue to use the figure of 800 million as a national population total, the new provincial figures, as already noted, add to a total of almost 920 million. But the growth rates since 1957 implied by some of the new figures are impossibly low and some of the others are questionable. It is likely that quite a few of the figures are either out of date or defective. The sum of a set of really current figures for all provinces would probably be well up in the 900 millions by yearend 1977.

Other Indications of the Current National Total

96

Since 1957, PRC officials, among them Premier Chou En-lai, have from time to time cited national population growth rates for various years which seem in some cases to have been based on estimates used for planning purposes by central government agencies. The growth rates do not form a complete series, but there are few gaps up to 1974. On the basis of these figures a maximum and minimum series of values can be reconstructed extending from 1958 through 1976. When these alternate sets of growth rates are applied to the official population total of 646,530,000 for yearend 1957, the estimated totals for yearend 1976 range from 938 million to 968 million. This narrow range does not represent the full measure of uncertainty about the size of the PRC population as of that date but merely the range within which official estimates should fall if the growth rates cited by the various PRC sources are close to those used in making the estimates. Hence both the new provincial figures and the national population growth rates point to a current population total that is fast approaching the one billion mark. Another sign that this is the magnitude of official estimates is the fact that, after holding doggedly to the obviously inadequate total of 800 millions for almost 4 years, PRC media have at last apparently been authorized to refer to China's population as 900 million. As recently as March 1978, the People's Daily and the New China News Agency were still citing the figure of 800 million in items reporting the closing of the first session of the Fifth National People's Congress, 97 but there had been hints recently that a change was about to take place. Prominent Chinese officials had been using the figure of 900 million in briefings of foreign visitors at least since last fall,98 and some excerpts of a speech given in Peking by Prime Minister Mintoff of Malta which included a reference to China's population of 900 million were published in the Peking Review in November 1977.99 In March 1978, at a meeting with the deputy

See Aird, "Recent Provincial Population Figures," p. 40.

17 JMJP Mar. 14, 1978; FBIS, No. 56, Mar. 22, 1978, p. E14; and NCNA, Peking, Mar. 5, 1978; FBIS, No. 44, Mar. 6, 1978, p. D9. In his report to the Congress on government work, delivered on Feb. 26, Hua Kuo-feng did not cite the figure of 800 million, but he did refer to China's population as one-fifth of the world's total, presumably meaining 800 million of the world's 4 billion.

A group of foreign journalists heard Vice Premier Chi Teng-k'uei use the figure during a briefing in the fall of 1977. See "China's Great Leap Sideways," The Economist, Nov. 5, 1977, p. 103. Emily Mac Farquhar is quoted in a word-of-mouth account to have heard the Vice Premier twice use the figure in Chinese (chiu yi). Han Su-yin also reports having heard the total cited during a recent visit to China.

99"Prime Minister Mintoff's Speech (Excerpts)", Peking Review, No. 46, Nov. 11, 1977, p. 9. This does not, of course, constitute an official endorsement of the figura, but the Peking Review would not have included this statement among their “'excerpts" if they had found it unacceptable.

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leader of the West German Parliament, Teng Hsiao-ping made the observation that even if, in the event of war, the Soviet Union "neutralized" 200 million Chinese in the Northeast, there would still be 700 million Chinese "in fighting order." 100 Up to this point, the only references to a population of 900 million had been in conversations with foreigners or in publications that only foreigners would normally see. Then on April 1 a joint editorial in the People's Daily, Red Flag, and the Liberation Army Daily carried as its title a line from a poem celebrating the conclusion of the National Science Conference that included the phrase "leaping forward are the 900 million in China." 101 From this point onward, the new total may be expected to displace the figure of 800 million as the current rhetorical total for China. The new figure is already out of date; China's population should have exceeded 900 million by about 1973.

A few references to figures over 900 million have been attributed to PRC sources. Judith Banister cites an anonymous source who reportedly worked on an occasional basis for a government ministry in Peking and who claims to have seen what was presumably an official Chinese estimate that 930 million people in China received cloth rations as of midyear 1976.102 It is not clear whether the estimators would have assumed that all Chinese presently receive cloth rations; the unregistered probably do not. Several reports by visitors to the PRC within the past 2 years have contained references to population totals of 950 million or larger. In August and September 1977 a delegation of family planning specialists made an 18-day tour of the PRC, at the conclusion of which they held a press conference in Hong Kong. An Agence France Presse report of the conference quotes one of the leaders of the delegation as saying that during the trip "Chinese officials *** told her repeatedly that the present population was 950 million." 103 However, the report appears to be in error. Followup conversations with members of the delegation have failed to establish that any Chinese official was heard by the group using a population total of this-or for that matter any other-magnitude. A similar report that a delegation of state legislators from the United States that visited the PRC in 1976 and a second delegation that was there in September 1977 were also given the figure of 950 million by their hosts remains, as of this writing, unverified. 104

Official estimates of the total population of the PRC may have reached or surpassed 950 million by midyear 1976, but before such a figure can be attributed to a Chinese source it must be confirmed that one or more reliable sources actually heard a Chinese official cite the figure. The reason for the extra caution is that the American Legation Office in Peking has, in its briefings of American visitors, sometimes included what it identifies as U.S. estimates of the Chinese population. The figure given out in 1976 was 950 million; that given out a year later was 966 million. These figures are rounded versions. of the FDAD intermediate model estimates of 950,744,000 and 965,937,000 for midyear 1976 and midyear 1977, respectively, that

100 Agence France Presse, (AFP), Peking, Mar. 23, 1978 (via Paris); FBIS, No. 57, Mar. 23, 1978, pp. A23-24.

101 NCNA, Peking, Mar. 31, 1978, FBIS, No. 64, Apr. 3, 1978, pp. E3-7. The poem was written by Yeh Chien-ying.

10: Judith Banister, op. cit., p. 20.

103 "PRC Population Reported to be 950 Million," AFP, Hong Kong, Sept. 6, 1977; FBIS, No. 173, Sept. 7, 1977, p. E16.

104 This information was obtained from Mr. Karl T. Kurtz, of the Conference of State Legislators, Denver Colo.

were prepared in the spring of 1976. There is therefore a strong possibility that the reports of Chinese citations of 950 million may be simply misattributions of the FDAD estimate for midyear 1976.

Until very recently it appears that some foreign scholars who have prepared estimates of the population of the PRC have let their judgment be swayed by the low magnitude of the rhetorical figure of 700 million, which first appeared in PRC sources in 1966, and the figure of 800 million which displaced it in 1974. Several have substituted low base totals attributed to the 1964 investigation for the higher figures implied by the 1953 census total and the 1957 registration figure, even though Chinese sources have never given any indication that the population data of the 1950's have been abandoned. Others have assumed annual population growth rates well below those cited by Chou En-lai and other Chinese sources during the 1960's and 1970's. As a result, until recently their estimates for the 1970's tended to be closer to the rhetorical figure of 800 million than to the higher total implied by the new provincial figures. Most will probably want to adjust their figures upward hereafter.

POPULATION ESTIMATES AND PROJECTIONS PREPARED BY FDAD IN 1976

For many years the Foreign Demographic Analysis Division has been preparing estimates and projections of the population of the PRC based partly on official data and partly on estimates and assumptions in lieu of data that were judged implausible or were not available. All of the series have used the 1953 census total of 582,603,417 as a base figure, although there are indications from the postenumeration checks that the census actually undercounted the population, and the margin of undercount could have been much greater than the officially announced 0.116 percent. Except for an "official data" model constructed some years ago and the low model of the present series, none have attempted to hold to the State Statistical Bureau's totals for other years during the 1950's because the published figures seem arbitrary in some cases and internally inconsistent in others. For years since the 1950's the population totals estimated by FDAD have been derived from assumptions about trends in vital rates. None of the undated round figures cited in PRC news items have been treated as data or assigned to particular years.

The vital rates for the years 1952-57 released by official sources have also been rejected as incomplete and unreliable. They seem to have been based on unadjusted data from atypical reporting units some of which were apparently defective. For 1953 intrinsic fertility and mortality levels were selected which, applied to the 1953 age-sex distribution of the population, yielded a birth rate of 45, death rate of 22.5, and natural increase rate of 22.5 per 1,000 population, instead of the official birth rate of 37, death rate of 17, and natural increase rate of 20.

The 1953 age-sex distribution reported in articles by several Chinese scholars and apparently based on 1953 census data obtained from official sources is also somewhat implausible in view of China's probable demographic history for the prior century. The proportion of the population in the older ages is too high, the proportion at ages under 15 somewhat too low, and there seem to be too many males

in relation to the numbers of females at all ages, particularly those that should have reflected the war losses of the 1930's and 1940's. An age-sex distribution derived from a model based on historical records of population growth with allowances for natural and manmade disasters was substituted for the 1953 census age-sex distribution. The assumed trends in vital rates for the years from 1954 to the present were based on interpretations of descriptive evidence relating to factors likely to affect the levels of fertility and mortality in the PRC. Every few years, a new series of estimates was prepared incorporating changes that seemed warranted because of important economic, political, or social developments that could be expected to influence vital trends. The food crisis of the early 1960's was one such event; the wave of early marriages following the disintegration of the Maoist youth movement in 1968 was another. Until about 1972, there were virtually no vital data, even for local areas, that could be used as a basis for estimating the levels and trends in fertility and mortality in the country as a whole. Prior to that time there was no reason to expect more than a gradual reduction in the rate of population growth during the remainder of the century.

However, as the third birth control campaign began to gather momentum from 1972 onward and local progress reports began to include birth, death, and natural increase rates compiled from local records indicating a significant decline in all three vital rates in some areas, it was necessary to entertain the possibility of a much more successful effort to control population growth in the PRC than had previously been thought possible. The first estimates and projections by FDAD that reflected the changed assessment of fertility trends were those prepared in the spring of 1976.

The 1976 estimates and projections incorporated several changes in methodology as compared with previous models. An effort was made for the first time to convert descriptive information about factors affecting fertility and mortality into index values that could be applied to the annual intrinsic fertility and mortality rates to obtain more realistic year-to-year changes, and an attempt was made to derive the fertility trends and levels for the 1970's from the birth rates reported for various local units.

The factors likely to affect fertility were marriage rates, birth control and abortion, sterilization, migration, nutrition, and general economic conditions. Mortality-related factors were sanitation, medical services, nutrition, and general economic conditions. Separate series of annual index values were calculated for urban and rural areas. The index values reflected the relative significance of each factor for each year throughout the period on a scale of 0 to 10. Weights were applied to each of the factors to reflect their relative importance for the demographic parameter to which they applied. The weights had a total value of 1.0. Using the weights, four sets of composite index values were made up for fertility and mortality for the urban and the rural populations.

Terminal birth and death rates were then established for 1976 for the urban and rural components of the high and low models. For the low model, the 1976 birth rates were derived from the mean birth rates reported for the early 1970's for urban and rural units. It was assumed that the units cited in news dispatches or shown to foreign visitors were atypically successful in family planning work or had