After conducting last November what was arguably the world's most ambitious census ever, the Chinese government has begun to release the results. China's National Bureau of Statistics has reported that mainland China's population totaled 1.266 billion last year, an increase of 132 million over the 1990 total. While that increase exceeds the entire population of Japan (127 million in 2000), the result met the government's official goal of staying below 1.3 billion for 2000. The accuracy of the new data, however, remains a key question. PRB associate editor Bingham Kennedy, Jr. researched this article while on a recent trip to Beijing.

http://www.prb.org/regions/asia_near_east/DissectingChinas2000Census.html

In Beijing, Kennedy also interviewed Yu Xuejun, director of the China Population Information and Research Center, about reproductive health in China. According to Yu, there has been a change in the tone of government pronouncements on family planning and reproductive health over the past decade. “In 1991, the white paper on population policy was full of directives: We must control the birth rate, we must increase birth planning, and so on. The 2000 white paper had a very different feel to it. It stressed quality of care, informed choice, human-centered development, social security, and voluntary participation in reproductive health programs. There is more of a tendency to see population policy in terms of the overall development picture now.”

http://www.prb.org/regions/asia_near_east/YuXuejun.html