Chapter 6: Demographic Changes and Challenges Flashcards
The population density in China is ________
153 per km²
What percentage of the population is urban?
61%
What is the median age?
38.4 years
What is the yearly growth rate? (%)
0.46
Population Concentrations: Primary Regions
- North China Plain
- Middle and Lower Yangtze
- Sichuan Basin
- Pearl River Basin and Delta
North China Plain (6)
Beijing, Tianjian, Heibei, Shandong, Henan, Southern Liaoning
Middle and Lower Yangtze (7)
Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai
Sichuan Basin (2)
Sichuan, Chongqing
Pearl River Basin and Delta (4)
Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macao
Population Concentrations: Secondary Regions
- Songliao Plain
- South and Southwest
- Hexi Corridor
- Non-Han Areas
Songliao Plain (3)
Remainder of Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang
South and Southwest
Rugged uplands of the southern provinces
Hexi Corridor (4)
Gansu, Xinjiang and Tibet oases, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai
Non-Han Areas (3)
oases of Xingjiang, Qinghai, Xizang
When was the One Child Policy launched?
1981 when the population reached 1 billion
Explain the initial and revised goal of the One Child Policy
Initial Goal: stabilize China’s population at 1.2 billion
Revised Goal: Keep China’s population under 1.4 billion until 2010
Population expected to stabilize around ___ billion by ____.
1.6, 2050
Family Planning: Urban Areas include:
- small sized apartments
- improving one’s status and level of consumption
- easier control from the government
Family Planning: Rural Areas
- families want more children to work the family plots and sustain parents when they get old
- want sons who will continue the family line and provide ritual sacrifices to their ancestors after they die
Family Planning: Fluctuations of Fertility (4)
- fertility has declined substantially before the OCP
- reached a low in 1984
- increased from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s
- sizeable age cohort entering their reproductive years
How many children per couple were allowed in rural areas in 1986?
2
In 1995, restrictions was lifted for ______ areas
urban
Family Planning: Imbalanced Sex Ratio (5)
- male children are more valued
- 120 boys for 100 girls (national average)
- abandon or abortion of females: 11 million abortions/year; 1 out of 2 live births
- “missing female population” as girls are not declared
- only 1% of females are unmarried by the age of 30
Family Planning: Government’s Response (5)
- well aware of the situation but limited range of options
- laws giving girls and women equal rights with males
- Propaganda and consciousness-raising slogans about the equal value and contributions of females and males
- Laws outlawing infanticide, prenatal sex identification and sex-selective abortion
- Policies in most provinces allowing rural couples
Currently, how many children are all Chinese couples allowed to have?
3
Over the past three decades, what has China’s demographic landscape experienced?
- Changing family structures
- Growing Aging Population
- Increasing ethnic diversity
Dynamic internal migration and changing patterns of spatial population distribution have driven ___________ and increased ___________
urban sprawl, coastal population density
What percentage of the world’s population lives within the borders of the People’s Republic of China?
18.6%
How many ethnic groups are found in China
56
What are the 5 Provincial level autonomous regions?
Tibet, Guangxi Zhuang, Ningxia Hui, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang Uygur
Where are most ethnic minorities concentrated in?
West regions
What is the household registration (hukou) system
- to clearly delineate the population into agricultural and nonagricultural residents based on location, employment and birth
Due to the increased _______ of the population after the Chinese market reform, the hukou system became ______ reliable as a source of population information
mobility, less
What period did the most rapid growth take place? What was the population?
1657-1848, as low as 70 million to 427 million
The Vast majority of the Chinese people are concentrated in the ________ half go the country
eastern
Which regions have especially dense populations?
The North China Plain, the middle and lower Chang Jiang, the Sichuan Basin and Pearl River Basins and Delta
Which rivers facilitated the movement of people and goods?
The Chang Jiang, Zhu Jiang, Xi Jiang
The information collected on the 1953 census (first census) :
- the address of each Chinese household
- the name
- age
- sex
- ethnicity
- relationship to the head of the household
Where has substantially higher birth rates in China?
western and interior provinces than in east coast provinces because the family planning policy did not apply to minorities
What is demographic transition?
a pattern that has been observed in many countries undergoing industrial development, consisting of 3 stages
What are the three stages of demographic transition?
- The first stage is characterized by relatively high birth rates
- Is a period of rapid population growth resulting from declining death rats and continued high birth rates
- both birth and death rates are relatively low
China’s population
Based on the Marxist notion of surplus labour value, Chairman Mao Zedong believed that a ________ population would ________ production
large, increase
In 1971, how did the nation lower the fertility rate?
- all newly married couples were required to practice birth control
When was the one-child policy put into effect?
January 1979 - 2015
Explain the One-Child policy.
- honour certificates were issued to coupes who pledged to have no more than one child
- economic benefits such as receiving free full medical coverage for the child and a “monthly one-child bonus” which amounted to an average worker’s monthly income
- single child families enjoyed priority in housing allocation and received the same amount of living space as families with two or more children (incentives were cancelled if a second child was born)
When did the Chinese government decide to end its one-child policy?
October 29, 2015
What is the elder dependency ratio?
the population aged 65+ divided by the population aged 15-64
What is the youth dependency ratio?
the population aged 0-14 divided by the population aged 15-64
When did Chinese education grow significantly?
1990
Adult literacy has improved dramatically since the founding of the PRC, increasing from about ____ percent to more than _____ percent today.
25%, 94%
How is literacy defined in China?
For people aged 12 +
- ability to read and write 1,500 to 2,000 ideographs or characters
Was there a higher percentage of male or female enrolled in educational institutions?
Female
What is the Confucian canon?
- formed the basis of China’s official culture and influenced its value system from the fourth century BC
- provided an ideological justification for women’s inferior role
What does “Women hold up half the sky” mean? Who is this said by?
- popularized in the Cultural Revolution
- to show the party chairman’s support for women’s full equality
- Mao Zedong
Where has higher sex ratios and why?
- in South and southwest regions including Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Fujian, Zhejiang, Tianjin and Qinghai
- these regions are mostly undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization, and therefore attract many young people (especially young men as workers)
Why might it be difficult for high sex ratios in these regions?
makes it difficult for men who wish to marry to find partners locally
What is China’s economy more reliant on now than before?
- before: heavily on agriculture
- now: manufacturing and the service industry
Employment in the agricultural sector has decreased from ____% in 1952 to ____% in 2019
84%, 25.1%
Where has higher percentage of employment in the manufacturing and service sectors?
east
What is China’s State Councils new regulations?
- giving rural migrants the legal right to work in cities
- providing a process through which they might establish official residence in the urban areas where they work
What is China’s greatest resource?
China’s people
